A water tunnel study of Gurney flaps

Several Gurney flap configurations were tested in the NASA Langley 16 x 24 inch Water Tunnel. These devices provided an increased region of attached flow on a wing upper surface relative to the wing without the flaps. The recirculation region behind the flap was visualized and shown to be consistent with hypotheses stated in previous research. Although the test Reynolds number for this study was several orders of magnitude below those in previous investigations, the effect of the Gurney flaps is in qualitative agreement with them. This is as would be expected from first order effects for high lift devices.