Experimental Study of Aerodynamics Performance of NACA4418 Airfoil with Fencing

This study investigates the effects of the boundary layer fence on the aerodynamic effectiveness of the NACA4418 taper wing with a taper ratio of 0.8. Subsonic wind tunnel investigations were conducted to observe the influence of boundary layer covers on the aerodynamic performance of the wings of various freestream velocities such as 10–40 m/s with intervals of 10 m/s and different angles of attack varying from 0° to 40° with an interval of 10°. Two boundary layer fence configurations were tested in two different configurations: the first one is a single fence set at 50% of the span and the second configuration is two fences set at x/s of 0.3 and 0.6 on the wing span. The test setup also includes a three-component balance to measure lift and drag coefficients and low-speed subsonic wind tunnel with a testing section size of 600 mm0 × 600 mm × 1200 mm (B × W × L). It is found that the results by application of a boundary layer fence increase the coefficient of lift and lower the drag coefficient. These results suggest that boundary layer fencing is an effective technique for improving the aerodynamic performance of taper blades and may contribute to the development of more efficient and sustainable aircraft technologies.