Alex Skillen

Flow over a Wing with Leading-Edge Undulations

The stall-delaying properties of the humpback whale flipper have been observed and quantified in recent years, through both experimental and numerical studies. In the present work, numerical simulations of an infinite-span wing with an idealized representation of this geometry are reported at a Reynolds number of 1.2×10(to the power of 5). Using large-eddy simulation, an adequate spatial resolution is first established before also examining the spanwise extent of the domain. These results are then analyzed to provide an explanation of the conditions that drive the lift observed beyond the conventional stall angle. The undulating leading-edge geometry gives rise to a spanwise pressure gradient that drives a secondary flow toward the regions of minimum chord. In turn, this leads to the entrainment of higher-momentum fluid into the region behind the maximum chord, which energizes the boundary layer and delays stall. Aside from demonstrating a significant poststall lift, the undulations also have the added benefit of substantially reducing lift fluctuations.

Improved Embedded Approaches

In contrast to the non-zonal, DES-like, hybrid approaches, in which a transition from RANS to LES relies upon a natural instability of separated shear layers in massively separated flows, the zonal RANS-LES (actually, RANS – Wall Modelled LES or RANS-WMLES) hybrids imply the presence of a sharp interface between the flow regions treated by RANS and LES. The location of this interface may be arbitrarily specified by the user based on their understanding of the flow physics, available computational resources or the objectives of the simulation, e.g., a need for unsteady flow characteristics.

Direct Comparison of Embedded Approaches

Enhanced computational resources and improvements in synthetic turbulence generation methods have motivated a higher level of activity in embedded (zonal) approaches for turbulence simulation in recent years.