| Summary: | Bio-inspired engineering approach of using wavy leading edge (WLE) for the airfoil design continues to be an interesting subject for researchers to understand in terms of the fundamental principles of fluid dynamics. In this study, a range of angles of attack and airfoil Configurations are considered. A comprehensive simulation study is carried out to understand the aerodynamic performance and flow pattern, as well as wake development characteristics, of a NACA0012 airfoil with WLE at low speeds and various angles of attack. NACA airfoils is selected because of the wide-spread use in turbomachinery and also due to the aerodynamic efficiency. Three models of WLE airfoils with three different amplitudes are constructed using computeraided design (CAD) software, CATIA and they are then used for the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation analysis. For the simulation setup, Reynolds number of the air flow is set to 400,000 and angle of attack is varied from 0 degrees to 20 degrees with increment of 1 degrees. The lift and drag coefficients and flow structures are recorded and compared with that for the baseline NACA0012 airfoil. Overall, the numerical results indicate that the three airfoils with WLE have significantly increased lift and drag coefficients in the post -stall region in which the lift increases up to about 13.5% more than that of the NACA0012 for angles of attack greater than 18 degrees and have a much soft stall process with low abrupt loss of lift. However, at low angles of attack, the performance of conventional NACA0012 airfoil and WLE airfoils does not differ significantly. This is due to fact that the wavy shape of the airfoil's leading edge creates a small amount of turbulence in the airflow over its surface. This advantage could lead the WLE airfoils to be used in the applications of turbomachinery such as horizontal-axis-wind turbines (HAWT)
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