Use of Riblets to Obtain Drag Reduction on Airfoils at High Reynolds Number Flows

Abstract

An investigation was carried out to study the drag reduction capabilities of riblets (commercially available) when installed on a supercritical airfoil which was aerodynamically tested in the NAE's High Reynolds Number 2 D Test Facility. The flow conditions in this test ranged from M= 0.15 to M= 0.76, and Re/ft = 1.5 million to Re/ft =8 million. The airfoil with riblets exhibited less drag than a completely turbulent air foil (without riblets) for Mach Number M < or = 0.5 and Reynolds Numbers Re/ft < or = 5 million. It was found that the thinner riblets material (0.0013) gave more attractive drag results than the thicker riblets (0.0030). However, at higher Mach numbers Reynolds number no drag reduction was observed. Canada.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA201485

Entities

People

  • Muhammad Khalid

Organizations

  • National Research Council Canada

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Airfoils
  • Boundaries
  • Boundary Layer
  • Boundary Layer Transition
  • Drag
  • Drag Reduction
  • Friction
  • Layers
  • Mach Number
  • Materials
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Reynolds Number
  • Skin Friction
  • Test Facilities
  • Two Dimensional
  • Wind Tunnels

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.