Resolution assessment of Reynolds stress model-based DES methods for high-lift device flow over 30P30N configuration

Abstract

Flows over high-lift devices (HLD) contain abundant complex physical characteristics such as flow separation, free shear layer transition, and turbulent vortex evolution, which cause challenges to the numerical prediction of unsteady flow characteristics over the HLD. The recently developed detached-eddy simulation (DES) based on the Reynolds-stress model (RSM) is expected to resolve the complex flow characteristics with high fidelity due to the RSM model holding fewer modeling assumptions than classical eddy-viscosity models (EVM). To assess the flow resolution performance of the RSM-based DES method and its dynamic version on the HLD, they are adopted in the numerical investigation of flow over a 30P30N multielement airfoil, a canonical HLD configuration with sufficient experiment measurements. The widely used EVM-based DES method, the shear-stress transport (SST)-based DES method, is also applied for the numerical investigation as the benchmark DES method for the flow resolution performance assessment of RSM-based DES methods. The results are compared with the available experimental data and the benchmark DES method, including average quantities, fluctuation quantities, and instantaneous flow field. It is found that RSM-based DES methods can overcome the prediction delay matter of free-shear layer instability appearing in the SST-based DES method. The dynamic RSM-based DES method can predict the fluctuation flow characteristics in the slat cove of 30P30N configuration more exactly than the other two methods and resolve finer vortex structures in the flow field.