PARAMETRIC INVESTIGATION OF A HIGH-LIFT AIRFOIL AT HIGH REYNOLDS-NUMBERS

A new two-dimensional, three-element, advanced high-lift research airf oil has been tested in the NASA Langley Research Center's Low-Turbulen ce Pressure Tunnel at a chord Reynolds number up to 1.6 x 10(7), The c omponents of this high-lift airfoil have been designed using a incompr essible computational code (INS2D), The design was to provide high max imum-lift values while maintaining attached flow on the single-segment flap at landing conditions. The performance of the new NASA research airfoil is compared to a similar reference high-lift airfoil, On the n ew high-lift airfoil the effects of Reynolds number on slat and flap r igging have been studied experimentally, as well as the Mach number ef fects, The performance trend of the high-lift design is comparable to that predicted by INS2D over much of the angle-of-attack range, Howeve r, the code did not accurately predict the airfoil performance or the configuration-based trends near maximum lift where the compressibility effect could play a major role.