Comparative analysis of compressible inviscid flow over symmetric and supercritical airfoil

Studying compressible inviscid flow over symmetric and supercritical airfoils is important because it is useful to understand and maximize aerodynamic performance in a range of industrial contexts. This study addresses the analysis of symmetric and supercritical airfoils for compressible inviscid flow for both time-dependent and stationary scenarios. The primary goal of these simulations’ is to look at how different velocity variations affected certain airfoil parameters. Air is utilized as the material above airfoils. The best fit for these simulations is the Spalart-Allmaras Turbulence model, which shows good agreement over a wider velocity range with published experimental data from other studies. The COMSOL Multiphysics software is used for all the analysis, for angle of attack 0°, temperature 288K, pressure 1bar and the airfoils that are constructed by importing airfoil data file in COMSOL in the form of excel file. On the comparison of compressible inviscid flow, the supercritical airfoil has better results on the basis of velocity magnitude, pressure, vorticity magnitude, shear rate and rotation rate. The results are converging faster in supercritical airfoil than symmetric airfoil. At a zero-degree angle of attack, velocity increases more on the suction side while decreases on the pressure side (bottom). The final solution error for supercritical airfoil is 1.6E-05, while final residual error for “velocity u pressure p” is 1.2E-05. For symmetric airfoil, final solution error is 0.15, although final residual error is 2.6. Based on the error plot, it decreases rapidly in case of supercritical with a range from 100 to 10-4. Additionally, the wall resolution is constructed for both cases i.e., symmetric airfoil and supercritical airfoil. The main result is that ,with the passage of time, the flow is becoming to stationary state. In the end, model validation via comparison with experimental data highlights the validity and applicability of the results.