Parametric Investigation of a High-Lift Airfoil at High Reynolds Numbers

A new two-dimensional, three-element, advanced high-lift research airfoil has been tested in the NASA Langley Research Center s Low-Turbulence Pressure Tunnel at a chord Reynolds number up to 1.6 x 107. The components of this high-lift airfoil have been designed using a incompressible computational code (INS2D). The design was to provide high maximum-lift values while maintaining attached flow on the single-segment flap at landing conditions. The performance of the new NASA research airfoil is compared to a similar reference high-lift airfoil. On the new high-lift airfoil the effects of Reynolds number on slat and flap rigging have been studied experimentally, as well as the Mach number effects. The performance trend of the high-lift design is comparable to that predicted by INS2D over much of the angle-of-attack range. However, the code did not accurately predict the airfoil performance or the configuration-based trends near maximum lift where the compressibility effect could play a major role.