Assessment of Compressible RANS and LES Methods for Organic Vapor Flows Past a NACA4412 Airfoil

Abstract

Abstract In this contribution, an assessment of compressible Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations (RANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is presented using transonic organic vapor flow past a NACA4412 airfoil as a case study. The NACA4412 represents a canonical geometry, which, in case of air, has been well investigated numerically and experimentally. The results of the real gas simulations are compared with those of air simulations. For the real gas, the organic vapor Novec 649® is chosen as a representative fluid. The thermodynamic behavior of Novec 649® is modeled with the Peng-Robinson equation of state. Different inlet Mach numbers are applied, namely, a sub-critical, the critical, and a super-critical Mach number. It turns out, that the critical Mach number of the NACA4412 airfoil increases when Novec 649® is used as working fluid. Furthermore, it is shown that real gas flow simulations cause additional difficulties for the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Although the speed of sound of Novec 649® is lower than the speed of sound of air, a finer grid resolution is required for the real gas simulations due to its high density. Based on an extensive simulation study, an assessment of different numerical modelling strategies and methods is given.