Experimental study on the performance of a hydrofoil using passive water-jet vortex generators

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents an experimental study of a passive version of the Water-jet vortex generator to reduce the drag force over a NACA 661-012 hydrofoil. The passive blowing used the overpressure zone at the leading edge of the hydrofoil’s lower surface as a source of water jets that create jets on the upper surface of the hydrofoil using the blowing tubes. The experimental tests were carried out in the towing tank in Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) with a hydrofoil model with a 250-mm long chord at Reynolds numbers of (1.4 105 < Re < 2.8 105). It was found that the passive water-jet vortex-generator reduces the drag force with a slight lift decrease.