Numerical investigation of transitional flows over NACA 0012 Airfoil

Abstract

The prediction of the onset of transition on airfoils operating at low Reynolds number is critical to understand the aerodynamic characteristics. Yet, this is a challenging problem to most computational approaches employed for routine engineering applications. In this work, we study the aerodynamic characteristics of NACA 0012 airfoil with respect to its application in unmanned air vehicles, aircraft and ship rudders. All these applications typically lie in the low-to-medium Reynolds number range, and therefore are susceptible to transition. The study employs four-equation Transitional SST model in the framework of low-cost Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations to study the flow behavior at Re = 3 106 and angle of attack between 0 and 12. The results indicate that the aerodynamic parameters, such as lift and drag coefficients are well predicted by this transition model. Further, the model also successfully predicts onset of the transition on both top and bottom surfaces in the considered flight envelope. The predicted values are in better agreement with experiments than those available in literature.