Direct numerical simulation of transitional flow past an airfoil with partially covered wavy roughness elements

Abstract

We perform direct numerical simulation of flow past the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) 0012 airfoil with partially covered wavy roughness elements near the leading edge. The Reynolds number Rec based on the freestream velocity (U0) and airfoil chord length (C), and the angle of attack (AoA) is fixed, i.e., Rec=5×104, AoA=10°. The leading edge roughness elements are characterized by streamwise sinusoidal-wave geometry that is uniform in the spanwise direction with fixed height, whereas varying wave numbers (k) from 0 to 12. Based on the validation of the smooth baseline case (k = 0), the roughness effects on the aerodynamic performance are evaluated in terms of the lift and drag coefficients. The drag coefficient decreases monotonically with k, while the variation of the lift coefficient with k is similar to the “drag crisis” phenomenon observed in cylinder flows. The sharp variations of lift and drag coefficients from k = 6 to 8 indicate that k = 8 is a critical case, beyond which massive separation occurs and almost covers the airfoil's suction side and dominates the airfoil aerodynamic performance. To further reveal the underlying mechanism, the flow structures, pressure, skin friction coefficients, shear layer transition onset, and boundary layer separation are quantified to investigate the roughness effects. The roughness elements strongly modify the separation behavior, whereas they have little effect on the transition onset. The unsteady interactions and convections of separation bubbles downward the trailing edge also change the wake evolution. Based on the scaling of the asymmetric wake profiles, we find that the wake defect is gently decreasing with k, but the increase in the wake width is much stronger. This scaling analysis gains a better insight into the roughness effects on the momentum deficit flow rate, which confirms the drag mechanism with different roughness wave numbers.