Aerodynamics & Aerospace: Airfoil

The airfoil is the most fundamental geometry in all of aerodynamics — its shape governs the lift and drag that determine the performance of aircraft wings and turbine blades alike. In this project, you'll use ANSYS Fluent to study the airflow around a three-dimensional airfoil and learn to read the flow physics that engineers actually design around.

You'll simulate an incompressible, isothermal airflow over a 0.5-meter NACA-type airfoil placed inside a wind tunnel domain, with a free-stream inlet velocity of 10 m/s. The mesh, built in ANSYS Meshing, is refined around the leading edge, the upper and lower surfaces, and the trailing edge to capture the boundary layer and wake accurately, while coarsening toward the far-field boundaries to keep the cell count efficient. The case is solved with a pressure-based, steady-state solver using the k–ω SST turbulence model.

From the results, you'll learn to interpret the high-pressure stagnation region at the leading edge, the low-pressure suction zone on the upper surface that generates lift, and the pressure differential between the upper and lower surfaces that produces the net upward aerodynamic force. You'll also see how the velocity field accelerates over the suction side and develops a velocity deficit in the wake, where vortical structures and energy loss give rise to aerodynamic drag. Finally, you'll connect these flow features to the lift and drag coefficients and see why near-wall mesh refinement is essential for reliable predictions.

By the end of this project, you'll be able to set up, solve, and analyze a complete external aerodynamics case in ANSYS Fluent — and understand the forces and losses behind the results, not just the contours.