Dynamic stall on a supercritical airfoil

For the present investigations of dynamic stall a supercritical airfoil was chosen. This new airfoil designed by DLR will be used in dynamic stall control research activities (project ADASYS) planned for the near future: the leading edge portion of the airfoil will be drooped down dynamically to improve dynamic stall characteristics on the retreating side during blade motion. The optimised transonic properties of the airfoil, i.e., reduction of shock strength over a Mach number range will improve in addition the performance of the advancing rotor blade. Dynamic stall experiments on the rigid supercritical airfoil have first been carried out in the DNW-TWG transonic wind tunnel with a 1 m × 1 m cross section of the test section and adaptive top and bottom – walls. This tunnel has the advantage to cover the speed range of both retreating and advancing blade. Emphasis has been placed on unsteady pressure measurements along the adaptive walls simultaneously with the unsteady pressure measurements on the pitching model. In addition to the experiments corresponding numerical simulations with a RANS-code have been carried out and their results are compared with the experimental data. Of main concern are the influence of laminar-turbulent boundary-layer transition as well as wind-tunnel-wall interference effects on the unsteady results.