NACA0012 Airfoil in Re=1x10^6 Viscous Airflow with Incidence Varied From -20 to 20 Degrees Video

This shows plots of the coefficient of pressure for the upper surface (yellow) and lower surface (blue) of a NACA0012 airfoil (upper plot) and a plot of the boundary layer separation on the upper and lower surfaces (gray lines show the airfoil's geometry) (lower plot) as incidence is varied.

As the video plays the incidence (angle of attack) is varied from -20 to 20 degrees. You can see some places where I had some difficulty convincing the program to converge. (i.e. at near alpha=2 degrees)

The numbers in the upper right are the Reynolds number, incidence, coefficients of lift, moment, and drag, the lift to drag ratio, and some other "critical" value that is considered constant (at the time of this typing I forget what it is, for the assignment I was mostly only concerned with the lift coefficient).

This was done using XFOIL, a airfoil analysis program developed by Mark Drela at MIT. (http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xfoil/)

It was for Prof. Chattot's "Applied Aircraft Aerodynamics" class (EAE 127) at the University of California at Davis.