Computational-Fluid-Dynamics Best Practices for Aircraft Wing-Tip Vortex Roll-Up

Abstract

Best practices for simulating aircraft wing-tip vortex roll-up with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes computational fluid dynamics were developed using a build-up approach with the NASA OVERFLOW flow solver. Methods were tested for accuracy and computational expense beginning with a simple case, then building up step by step in complexity toward a realistic aircraft geometry. The cases tested started two-dimensionally with an inviscid vortex, then a viscous vortex, then three-dimensionally with a basic rectangular finite wing, a semispan wing that included validating wind-tunnel test data, and finally to a realistic wing/body aircraft configuration that also included wind-tunnel data. Comparisons were also made with algebraic vortex models used to initialize large-eddy simulations of wake decay.