Abstract
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 $-5^{\circ}C$ and $+25^{\circ}C$ 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 variable at the reduced frequency of 0.1. Ensemble-averaged velocity and turbulence intensity profile were presented to examine the near-wake characteristics depending on the Reynolds number. The axial velocity deficit in the near-wake region tend to decrease with the increase in the Reynolds number a found in many stationary airfoil test . 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 either the laminar boundary layer or turbulent boundary layer separation.
