Investigation of effects of sand particles on aerodynamic performance of NACA 0012 airfoil

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of turbulence kinetic energy structures formed during flow and particles of different diameters and different flow velocities in the air in different regional areas on aerodynamic performance characteristics in NACA 0012. Single and two phase fluid flows were worked out by using Ansys Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code. Computational results obtained from Ansys Fluent CFD code for pure air and the air containing sand particles were compared with numerical values gained in the literature for validation. Results obtained from the numerical tests demonstrate good agreement with the value in the literature. These results indicate the turbulence kinetic energy value occurred in the tail region of the airfoil increases with the increase in the angle of attack and shifts towards the upper region of the airfoil at high attack angle. Moreover, the upper region of the airfoil at high attack angle becomes larger at low Reynolds numbers due to viscous effects. The drag and lift coefficients obtained in the numerical tests of the airfoils and in the experimental tests in the wind tunnel will differ from the values in the application area. Because, in the operation of airfoils in different regional environments, there are always particles of various concentrations and diameters in the air. In this case, the drag coefficient increases and the lift coefficient decreases.