Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 June 2016
The unsteady lift generated on a NACA 0015 aerofoil, a D cylinder (with the flat face down-stream) and an elliptic cylinder was measured when these bodies were exposed to a flow with a two-dimensional sinusoidal upwash at reduced frequencies 0.05 to 0.8. The mean flow Reynolds numbers were in the range 1.2 × 105 to 3 × 105. Unsteady thin aerofoil theory was used in an attempt to predict the unsteady lift on the bluff bodies, as well as the aerofoil section for fequencies in the low range below the vortex shedding frequency. The results were quite accurate for the aerofoil and the D cylinder, but the aerodynamic admittance predicted by this theory for the elliptic cylinder was significantly above that measured experimentally. The movement of the two free separation points was found to play an important role in the characteristic lift behaviour of the elliptic cylinder.