Finite Element Modeling and Analysis of Nanocomposite Airfoil Structures

Abstract

An airfoil or aerofoil is the cross - sectional shape of a wing or blade of a turbine, rotor or propeller. An aerodynamic force is produced when an airfoil moves through a fluid. These forces are the very reason of lift produced in an aircraft or to produce a downward force on an automobile to improve traction.The efficiency of an airfoil is characterised mainly on its profile section and its aerodynamic design. In the present study a NACA 2412 AIRFOIL model is selected and analysed.The material used for the analysis of airfoil is nanocomposite, because of its unique and better mechanical properties than the conventional materials. Nanocomposites are the materials which consist of two or more constituents combined at a nanoscale regime in such a manner that it gives improved properties (such as elastic, damping, wear and corrosion resistant etc.) as compared to other conventional materials. In the present study, free vibration and static structural analyses are cared out in order to investigate the effect of carbon nanotube content on the static and dynamic responses of NACA 2412 aerofoils. The effective elastic properties of carbon nanotube based nano - composites are determined using Halpin Tsai model where carbon nanotubes are assumed to be uniformly distributed and randomly oriented through the matrix. The properties thus obtained are used for further analysis. NACA 2412 airfoil profile was taken from readily available database and point clouds was imported to Solidworks in order to make 3D model. The solid model thus generated used in ANSYS to perform free vibration analysis. To find the lift and drag forces that the airfoil generates are found from computational fluid dynamics module available in ANSYS work bench. Finally the calculated lift and drag forces are utilised to perform static structural analysis. Several parameters such as total deformation, equivalent stresses and shear stresses are measured for different carbon nanotube content, airflow rate, and orientation of the airfoil. Increase in elastic properties is seen with increase in volume fraction of CNT in nanocomposite. From the study it is also observed that the natural frequency on the nanocomposite increases with increase in the percentage of carbon nanotubes with a drastic decrease in deflection.