A flow visualization study of the leading edge separation bubble on a NACA 0012 airfoil with simulated glaze ice

摘要

As a part of the ongoing research in aircraft icing, the leading edge separation bubble on the NACA 0012 model with a 5-min simulated glaze ice was investigated. The flow visualization methods used oil, tuft, splitter plate, smoke, and liquid crystals to get reattachment line data for the leading edge separation bubble on both surfaces of the airfoil. On the upper surface, the bubble was found to grow larger with increasing negative angles of attack and reduce in size with increasing angles of attack. The separated flow fails to reattach beyond 6 deg for the upper surface and -5 deg for the lower surface. The results of this study compared well with those of other experiments and computational results.