Effects of empirical correlations for crossflow instabilities applied to laminar-turbulent transition

• Grant number: 21/00031-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2021
• End date: August 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Aerospace Engineering - Aerodynamics
• Principal Investigator: João Luiz Filgueiras de Azevedo
• Grantee: Aline Roberta Santos Righi
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa. Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA). Ministério da Defesa (Brasil). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/07375-0 - CeMEAI - Center for Mathematical Sciences Applied to Industry, AP.CEPID

Abstract

The current Ph.D. research project aims at studying, developing, and improving approaches for the laminar-turbulent transition modeling based on the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations including empirical correlations for crossflow instabilities. Such mechanism occurs in many different aerospace configurations. The baseline RANS transition model is the Langtry-Menter model, to which the empirical crossflow correlations will be added as additional source terms. The main purpose of this work is the study of transition effects due to crossflow instabilities, as well as the comparison of different approaches that allow the inclusion of such effects into the flow simulation process. Different test cases will be considered in order to understand the effects of a number of different physical aspects on the suitability of the chosen empirical correlation. The main contributions from this research will be embedded into the BRU3D numerical code, which has been under constant development by the research group of the Computational Aerodynamics Laboratory of DCTA/IAE. Aspects to be considered include the study of roughness effects on transition due to stationary crossflow and the effects of source terms from the crossflow correlations on the aerodynamic coefficients. Moreover, the impact of the transition model implementation and its correlations on the numerical convergence will be investigated and the numerical results will be compared with experimental data. Conclusions from this research will be published in journal articles and conference proceedings that are relevant to the subject. (AU)