Dynamic stall at high Reynolds numbers due to variant types of airfoil motion

Unsteady airfoil experiments were conducted in a high-pressure wind tunnel at chord Reynolds numbers of Re_c = 3.0 × 10⁶. A moderately thick NACA0021 airfoil was pitched from rest beyond the static stall angle in six individual ramp tests with increasing and decreasing angles of attack. The variant types of motion of the pitching maneuvers were characterized by constant angular velocity, angular acceleration and angular jerk, respectively. The ramp-up experiments revealed a substantial and time-dependent excess of the aerodynamic forces from static values in all three test cases and exhibited a distinct time delay as a consequence of the variant motion types. Similarly, the ramp-down experiments were largely impacted by the progression of the pitching motion, resulting in pronounced differences in the temporal development of lift and drag. Results are shown as time series of integrated forces and surface pressure distributions.