Author : Abhijeet K Thosar, S. L. Pachpute, Tapobrata Dey

A detailed experimentation is carried out in open wind tunnel on an airfoil i.e. NACA0018 with same number of simulation by using ANSYS fluent 15.0 commercial software for characterizing fluid flow and aerodynamic forces. With change in air properties like temperature and relative humidity and other parameter like angle of attack and air speed. This study is carried out since there is very limited study for such a large combination of changing parameters. With the development of CFD software technology the study becomes easy as it saves lots of resources with proper visualization at each and every point. From experiments and simulation lot of conclusions are made of which it is observed that air speed and angle of attack is the most dominant factor in aerodynamic forces however, it also depends on temperature then humidity in a decreasing order. Hot and humid condition is the worst condition for aerodynamic forces i.e. lift forces and drag forces and is followed by hot condition and then humid condition.

Keywords: Computational fluid dynamics ,Wind tunnel , Digital psychrometer ,Anemometer ,Relative humidity(RH), Drag Force(FD) ,Lift Force(FL ) .