Discontinuous Galerkin Method for the Study of Active Gurney Flaps

Abstract

A discontinuous Galerkin method is proposed for the solution of the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, for turbulent flows in two dimensions. The numerical model is applied to the solution of unsteady flows associated to an actively controlled Gurney flap located in proximity of the trailing edge of an airfoil, with oscillations up to 20 Hz. The motion of the Gurney flap is simulated through no-slip viscous wall conditions applied to the interfaces between neighboring elements that coincide with the position of the flap at a given time instant. Several configurations of deployment motions are considered under different freestream conditions to demonstrate the capability of the solver to predict accurately unsteady nonlinear problems at high Reynolds numbers. The numerical calculations are compared with experimental data in the case of the NACA 0012 airfoil.