LESFOIL: Large eddy simulation of flow around a high lift airfoil. Results of the project LESFOIL, supported by the European Union 1998--2001. (Q701815)

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is a relatively new and still evolving computational strategy for predicting turbulent flows. It is now widely used in research to elucidate fundamental interactions in physics of turbulence, to predict phenomena which are closely linked to the unsteady features of turbulence and to create data bases against which statistical closure models can be assessed. However, its applicability to complex industrial flows, to which statistical models are applied routinely, has not been established with any degree of confidence. There is, in particular, a question mark against the prospect of LES becoming an economically tenable alternative to Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes methods at practically high Reynolds numbers and in complex geometries. Aerospace flows pose particularly challenging problems to LES, because of the high Reynolds numbers involved, and the need to resolve accurately small-scale features in the thin and often transitional boundary layers developing on aerodynamic surfaces. When the flow also contains a separated region -- due to high incidence, say -- the range and disparity of the influential scales to be resolved is enormous, and this substantially aggravates the problems of resolution and cost. It is just this combination of circumstances that has been at the heart of the project LESFOIL to which this book is devoted. This volume contains results of a European project on LES of the flow around an airfoil. The main objective of the LESFOIL project is to assess the suitability of LES for airfoil flow. To this end, preliminary work is carried out such as development of numerical methods, and subgrid modelling in geometrically simple flows such as fully developed channel flow and periodic flow in a channel with a curved hill-shaped surface. Accurate LES of wall-bounded flow requires fine cells in the near-wall region in all coordinate directions. In an attempt to release this constraint, a large part of the LESFOIL project is aimed at developing and validating different approximate near-wall treatments. In the second half of the book, several LESs of the flow around the Aerospatiale-A airfoil are presented, using different numerical methods, grids, SGS models and near-wall treatments. From the contents. Grid generation. Unstructured grids. Structured \(C\)-grids. Evaluation of subgrid models in simple configurations. Evaluated subgrid-scale models. Near-wall models. Numerical methods. Performance assessment. Speed-up. Deferred correction. Spatial discretization. Discretization scheme. Accuracy assessment. Velocity profiles. Fourier solver for the \(p'\) equation. Solution of momentum equations. Time-step control. The pressure equation. Domain decomposition and parallelization. Partial diagonalization. Multigrid algorithm. The airfoil investigations. Airfoil computations. The principal airfoil geometry. Common mesh. Boundary conditions. Convergence criteria. Turbulence models. Steady flow computations. Wall functions. Description of the Navier-Stokes code. Application to the A-airfoil. Comparison of LES results using different SGS models. Computational efficiency. Transition modelling. Simulation method. Euler flux discretization. 2D/3D coupling method. Simulations and results. Synthesis of the airfoil flow simulations. Common mesh comparisons. Trailing edge geometry. Near-wall modelling. Transition treatment.