The focus of this thesis is to determine the e ect of Active Flow Control ( AFC from now),
studying, analyzing the behavior of airfoil and afterwards, implementing AFC and evaluate
its impact on aerodynamic performance. The case characteristics are a 2D airfoil NACA 2412
computed at Re = 5000, angle of attack 20º and viscid incompressible ow. The objective of
AFC is to retard the boundary layer detachment in order to reduce the amplitude of the vortex
shedding created at the wake and reduce the induced drag and nally reduce drag e ect in
comparison with the previous and standard studied case without AFC.
Many parameters of AFC are involved in results: blowing, suction or sinusoidal behavior, amplitude of the AFC region, location implementation, magnitude or energy phenomena requested,
etc. This study has been able to study limited cases due to computation cost reasons. But
applying several hypothesis, the study has been able to extract conclusions.
Computations are performed using no model turbulence trying to recreate the Direct Numerical
Simulation ( DNS from now) concept although it can not be de ned as DNS properly due to
this is a 2D case and required y+ standards can not be reached for computational cost reasons.
This case is developed under a laminar regime due to low Reynolds number. The low Reynolds
number is high is the rst cell requested is for the same y+ requested. The reason why this case
is based on low Reynolds number is due to using Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes ( RANS
from now) equations with no turbulence model trying to reproduce DNS concept is because
low y+ is requested, which implies a high number of cells to protect a low y+ and a properly
expansion ratio and y+ is related with the velocity case. If the velocity case is low, for a
requested y+ will imply a high rst cell distance, which at the end it is related with the total
cell case.
This study has used open software called OpenFOAM which is been made to solve Navier-Stokes
equations by Computatinal Fluid Dynamics ( CFD from now) between other applications.
Results indicate that AFC is able to apply a positive e ect in aerodynamic performance in
comparison with baseline case. Some AFC characteristic variables have been studied.
