Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Trailing Edge Flows

Abstract

In the past several years, considerable advances have been made in the prediction of transonic trailing-edge flows. For modern supercritical airfoils the trailing edge region is dominated by viscous-inviscid interaction. In the near wake the flow field is complicated by streamline curvature and due to the interaction of the merging of two significantly different shear layers. Integral boundary-layer methods coupled with an inviscid flow-field solution have been successfully applied to both symmetric and asymmetric trailing-edge flows provided there is no boundary layer separation [128, 217, 218]. These methods are not satisfactory for flows with strong adverse pressure gradients leading to significant separated regions [217, 219]. Differential methods employing either a boundary-layer code coupled with an inviscid solution or the mass-averaged Navier—Stokes equations throughout the flow field have also been successful provided separation was not present [210, 218]. Recently an asymmetric trailing-edge flow with a small separated zone was successfully predicted using the Navier—Stokes equations [220]. The ability to calculate trailing-edge flows with large separated zones remains to be tested.