Prediction of laminar-turbulent transition on an airfoil at high level of free-stream turbulence

Department of Applied Mechanics, Chalmers University of Technology Göteborg 412 96, Sweden

Abstract

Prediction of laminar-turbulent transition at high level of free-stream turbulence in boundary layers of airfoil geometries with external pressure gradient changeover is in focus. The aim is a validation of a transition model for transition prediction in turbomachinery applications. Numerical simulations have been performed by using a transition model by Langtry and Menter for a number of different cases of pressure gradient, at Reynolds-number range, based on the airfoil chord, 50 000 ≤ Re ≤ 500 000, and free-stream turbulence intensities 2% and 4%. The validation of the computational results against the experimental data showed good performance of used turbulence model for all test cases.