Numerical Simulation of Swept-Wing Laminar–Turbulent Flow in the Presence of Two-Dimensional Surface Reliefs

Abstract

Stochastization of boundary-layer flow has a dramatic effect on the aerodynamic characteristics of wings, nacelles, and other objects frequently encountered in practice, resulting in higher skin-friction drag and worse aerodynamic quality. A swept-wing boundary layer encountering a transition to turbulence in the presence of two-dimensional surface reliefs is considered. The relief has the form of strips of a rectangular cross-section oriented parallel to the leading edge and located at different distances from it. The computations are performed for the angle of attack of −5° and an incoming flow velocity of 30 m/s using the ANSYS Fluent 18.0 software together with the author’s LOTRAN 3 package for predicting the laminar–turbulent transition on the basis of the eN-method. New data on distributions of N factors of swept-wing cross-flow instability affected by the surface relief are presented. The data are of practical importance for engineering modeling of the transition. Also, the effectiveness of using the reliefs as a passive method of weakening the cross-flow instability up to 30% to delay the flow stochastization is shown.

Keywords

• laminar–turbulent flow
• subsonic flows
• exp(<i>N</i>) method
• numerical simulation
• flow stochastization