Thermal Air Braking

This paper introduces the concept of thermal air braking, which involves heating a portion of the airfoil's upper surface to achieve the braking effect. A 2D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is conducted using ANSYS Fluent software to study the impact of heating the upper back portion of the top surface of an airfoil. The study compares the results of the heated and non-heated cases for NACA 4415. Different aerodynamic efficiencies are investigated, such as lift coefficient (CL), drag coefficient (CD), lift-to-drag coefficient (CL/CD), and pressure coefficient (CP). The results are promising since there is an increase in the drag coefficient by 70% and a decrease in the lift coefficient by 5%, achieved by heating the last portion of the airfoil. © 2023 IEEE.