Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Analysis of an Airfoil Performances under a Small Vortical Gust

This paper investigates the performance of a non-symmetric airfoil in a perturbed flow for a low Reynolds number by creating small vortical structures. A newly designed two-dimensional numerical tool is used to examine the interaction between the NACA 23015 airfoil and the vortex shedding from a square cylinder. Different airfoil position ratios are numerically simulated concerning the square cylinder G/D (D: square cylinder diameter), the channel centerline T/d (d=D/2), and the vortices scale size D/c (c: airfoil chord length). Results show that the maximum values of the lift and drag aerodynamic coefficients are influenced by the airfoil’s lateral and longitudinal positions. The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method is used to identify the most energetic flow structures. For all simulated scenarios, it was found that the first two modes reflect the dominating coherent structures in the flow field. The results also show that a leading-edge vortex is formed over the airfoil. The observed phenomena of symmetric and antisymmetric shedding vortex mechanisms essentially depend on the lateral distance of the airfoil T/d and the vortex scale size D/c. However, the spectral analysis demonstrates that the shedding frequency mainly depends on the gap distance G/D.