Numerical investigation of the interaction between laminar to turbulent transition and the wake of an airfoil

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate numerically the different physical mechanisms of the transition to turbulence of a separated boundary-layer flow over an airfoil at low angle of attack. In this study, the spectral elements code Nek5000 is used to simulate the flow over a SD7003 wing section at an angle of attack of α = 4 ◦ . Several laminar cases are first studied from Re = 2000 to Re = 10000, and a gradual increase of the Reynolds number is then performed in order to investigate one transitional case at Re = 20000. Computations are compared with measurements where the instability mechanisms in the separated zone and near wake zone have been analyzed. The mechanism of transition is investigated, where the DMD (Dynamic Mode Decomposition) is used in order to extract the main physical modes of the flow and to highlight the interaction between the transition and the wake flow. The results suggest that the transition process appears to be physically independent of the wake flow, while the LSB shedding process is locked-in with the von Kármán instability and acts as a sub-harmonic.