Phase II Final Report - NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts

Chapter 3.0 Vehicle Design
3.3 Wing Aerodynamics
The airfoil chord length, C, was 30 cm, and the maximum thickness was 1.4 cm, which is
approximately 5% of C. When the free stream-flow direction was tangential to the camber line at
the leading edge, the angle between the chord line and the free stream-flow direction (angle of
attack) was 11.310.
3.3.1.3.1 Preliminary Case Studies
For the first set of cases, a parabolic flow domain was meshed using the pave scheme of meshing,
with quadrilateral cells. The total number of cells in the mesh was 42,026. A larger number
of cells close to the airfoil surface and fewer away from it were used. Eight cases were run for
angles of attack ranging from -3 o to 17 o , in increments of about 3 o . Figure 3-40 shows the airfoil
with the mesh used for the analysis.
Figure 3-40: Airfoil with the Mesh
The conditions used were those on Mars, given in Table 3-5 below.
Table 3-5: Simulation Conditions
Density 0.176 kg/m 3
Dynamic Viscosity
Operating Pressure
Free Stream Velocity
1.0705e-05 kg/m-s
709 Pa
30 m/s
73