Modeling and analysis of NACA 4412 airfoil to increase lift and to optimize the lift-to-drag ratio

The energy from wind has been employed by man to do work for thousands of years. Over the time the method to convert kinetic energy of wind into mechanical energy has developed. In the recent years, many research papers and studies has been published to get the most optimum output by studying the effects of change in the parameters of the airfoil and the blade.;In this thesis, we studied the effect of wind velocity and angle of attack on an airfoil. The variations in the values of lift and drag for the four velocities of wind and eleven angles of attack have been studied. Also, the lift-to-drag ratio for each case was calculated and graphs plotted to study the variation in its value with increase in the angle of attack. GAMBIT was used to model and mesh the NACA 4412 airfoil with a chord length of one meter. For setting the boundary conditions and analyses, FLUENT was used. Coefficients of lift and drag were noted from the graphs plotted using the FLUENT software. These values for all of the forty-four cases analyzed were tabulated. From these values, conclusions were drawn to which angles of attack are suitable not only to maximize lift but also to optimize the lift-to-drag ratio because this is an important factor for choosing the blade profile and designing of a wind turbine.