Turbulence Modeling for Leading-Edge Vortices: An Enhancement Based on Experimental Data

What is it about?

The numerical simulation of the large-scale vortex flow dominating the aerodynamic characteristics of a delta wing is challenging due to the limitation of the ordinary turbulence models. A method to improve the accuracy for vortex dominated flows by maintaining reasonable computational costs is developed. A one equation turbulence model which is common in the community is enhanced with additional source terms which relate to different types or development stages of a vortex flow. An automated process to optimize the coefficients with respect to experimental data used as reference is established. The results show the potential of the application for large number of simulations which compose a data-set of a common baseline aircraft configuration which is set as target of the calibration.

Featured Image