A study of wing-fuselage interaction (Q1820049)

An important question for the computation of the three-dimensional boundary layer on a wing centers around the relevant initial profile at the wing-body junction. According to common practice the boundary-layer flow is initiated by assuming a zero-velocity profile at the root chord. The present authors show that this is in general not correct. Assuming that the fuselage does not extend ahead of the wing they demonstrate that the fuselage boundary layer plays an important role in determining the velocity profiles on the wing. Unless the wing cross-section has zero curvature (i.e. is a wedge) the boundary layer has a velocity component normal to the wing that does not vanish on the wing, leading to what the authors term a corner collision phenomenon. The authors suggest that this fluid is turned through a right angle in an inviscid manner without change in profile. The resulting profile may then be used as starting profile for the 3D wing boundary-layer calculation.