Gliding aerodynamic characteristics of insect-size corrugated airfoils

In order to investigate the effect of upper and lower surface corrugations on the aerodynamic forces respectively,the gliding aerodynamic characteristics of both surfaces of a corrugated airfoil were studied at chord Reynolds number of 1200 when the angle of attack (AOA) varied from 0° to 20° with the finite volume method, compared with the smooth airfoil,corrugated airfoil with the smooth upper surface and corrugated airfoil with the smooth lower surface. The computed results indicate that the lift coefficient of corrugated airfoil improves by 10% than that of smooth airfoil. Within a suitable AOA, the lift of an airfoil with corrugated lower surface is always higher than that of an airfoil with smooth lower surface. The corrugation of lower suface play more important role of increasing the lift. At high AOA, a smooth upper surface increases the lift than a corrugated one. The corrugation of both upper and lower surfaces has little effect on the drag.