• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.334-346
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• 2003

An experimental study was carried out to investigate near-wake characteristics of an elliptic airfoil oscillating in pitch. The airfoil was sinusoidally pitched about the half chord point between -5$^{\circ}$and +25$^{\circ}$angles of attack at the freestream velocities of 3.4 and 23.1 m/s. The corresponding Reynolds numbers based on the chord length were 3.3$\times$10$_{4}$ and 2.2$\times$10$^{5}$ , respectively. A hot-wire anemometer was used to measure the near-wake flow variables at the reduced frequency of 0.1. Ensemble-averaged velocity and turbulence intensity profiles were presented to examine the near-wake characteristics depending on the Reynolds number. The axial velocity deficit in the near-wake region tends to decrease with the increase in the Reynolds number as found in many stationary airfoil tests. Turbulence intensity in the near-wake region have a tendency to decrease with the -increase in the Reynolds number during the pitch-up motion, whereas it shows different feature during the pitch-down motion according to the separation characteristics.