Analysis of NACA 4412 Airfoil : ANALYSIS USING FLUENT & PANEL METHOD AND VERIFICATION WITH EXPERIMENTAL DATA

Flight has been a major part of the world since it was first demonstrated by the Wright brothers in 1902. However, in depth studies into the effects of airflow over wings didn't occur until World War I .In an attempt to better understand what made a good wing, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, henceforth referred to as the NACA, was founded. In 1933 the NACA tested 78 airfoil shapes in their wind tunnels with the data being published in Technical Report No. 460, "The Characteristics of 78 Related Airfoil Sections from Tests in the Wind Tunnel." This report also resulted in the creation of the four-digit scheme for defining the basic geometry of the airfoil. This same naming scheme was then used to define the other airfoil families, such as the five-digit airfoils. CFD analysis can be done using many software packages. FLUENT is one of it. FLUENT provides comprehensive modeling capabilities for a wide range of incompressible and compressible, laminar and turbulent fluid flow problems. FLUENT uses Finite Volume Method for analyzing the Airfoil properties such as coefficient of pressure, lift, drag etc