We experimentally investigate leading-edge separation control effect by bionic coverts with various materials and sawteeth shapes in wind tunnel tests. The artificial flexible coverts, bio-inspired by bird covert feathers on upper wings, are hinged at the trailing-edge of a NACA 0018 airfoil at a constant high angle-of-attack of 15°. The chord-based Reynolds number is 1.0 × 105 in the generic range of bird flight in nature and low-speed fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles. The velocity profiles in the wake flow are measured by multi-channel hot-wire anemometer. By comparing the mean velocity profiles and root-mean-square velocities, we find the trailing-edge coverts reduced the thickness of the shear layers by 0.05 chord length. The turbulence intensity of the trailing- and leading-edge shear layers are reduced 34% and 5%, respectively. Further wavelet analysis reveals that the large sizes of vortices are considerably suppressed in the time-frequency spectrum. Based on the hot-wire datasets, we develop a novel multi-dimensional genetic algorithm to analyze the featured ordered structures in the shear layers and quantitatively characterize the amplitude modulation between the large- and small-scale flow structures. As a result, we find that the coverts-generated perturbations induce an increase in the high-frequency (f = 91.2 Hz) coherence between the leading- and trailing-edge shear layers from 40% to 70%, leading to a reduction of the flow separation bubble on the upper wing. The present work reveals that the artificial bionic coverts have leading-edge flow separation control effectiveness and shows the engineering potential for aircrafts and unmanned aerial vehicles.
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