[redordead]

Im studying the effect of angle of attack variations on an airfoil. I would like to know whether one can simulate angle of attack in fluent by either angling in air at the required angle of attack and not doing anything to airfoil ? Does this approach result in different answers from an approach in which the airfoil is rotated to the required angle and air flow is kept perpendicular to the inlet ?

[`e`]

Principally, the reference frame is irrelevant; either the aerofoil is rotated or the boundaries are rotated. I'll assume you have an O-grid mesh where one half of the outer boundary is the velocity inlet and the other the pressure outlet. For small angles of attack, you could simply modify the inlet velocity direction (verify this assumption by comparing with a simulation where the mesh was changed).

Alternatively, you could preserve the inlet covering the upstream half and the outlet covering the downstream half of the outer boundary. This method involves merging the inlet and outlet, separating the new inlet and outlet boundary face zones and then applying the new boundary conditions. If there's a large number of angles of attack to explore, then it might be worthwhile automating this process with UDFs and Scheme files (but it's a little convoluted).

[redordead]

thanks a lot i understand now .