PRESSURE MEASUREMENTS ON A PITCHING AIRFOIL IN A WATER CHANNEL

Measurements of unsteady pressures over a symmetric NACA 0015 airfoil performing pitching maneuvers are reported. The tests were performed in an open-surface water channel specially constructed for this purpose. The design of the apparatus allowed the pressure measurements to be made to a very high degree of spatial and temporal resolution. Reynolds numbers in the range of 5.2 x 10(4) to 2.2 x 10(5) were studied. Although the results qualitatively agreed with earlier studies performed at similar Reynolds numbers, the magnitudes of pressure and aerodynamic forces measured were observed to be much larger than those measured in earlier pitchup studies. They were found, in fact, to be closer to those obtained in some recent high-Reynolds-number experiments. This interesting behavior, which was suspected to be caused by the relatively high freestream turbulence level in the water channel, was explored in some detail. In addition, several issues like the quasisteady and dynamic effects of the pitching process are discussed. The experimental data are all archived and are available for use as a database.