Sensitivity of TBL Wall-Pressure over the Flat Plate on Numerical Turbulence Model Parameter Variations

Abstract

A two-fold sensitivity of the zero-pressure gradient (ZPG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL) wall-pressure spectrum to different RANS model parameters is investigated for a flat plate case, which is a close approximation to the aircraft fuselage or wing. The alteration in the mean square pressure fluctuations due choice of semi-empirical pressure model and the choice of computational model parameters like solver, near wall grid clustering, measuring location, and flow velocity are separately studied. The underlying effect of different TBL parameters in the said sensitivity has been studied while numerically replicating wind tunnel experiments and in-flight tests considering different RANS configurations. Initially, the best-predicting pressure spectrum models are selected by comparing them with available in-flight and wind tunnel test data. Subsequently, the accuracy of all the individual model parameters in predicting mean TBL flow quantities like wall shear stress, boundary layer thickness, displacement thickness, momentum thickness, etc., and eventually mean square pressure (MSP) is estimated. The sensitivity of the mean square pressure fluctuations value to the TBL flow quantities and the near-wall grid clustering is observed to be significant. In general, family of models is found to be best in terms of numerical convergence and closeness when compared to the experimental MSP values. family of models is suggested to be avoided while estimating MSP in flat plate TBL case