Zonal Detached Eddy Simulation of a Civil Aircraft with a Deflected Spoiler

Abstract

This paper presents the simulation of a wing/body configuration with a deflected spoiler using the Zonal Detached Eddy Simulation approach in an emergency dive scenario at the Reynolds number based on the wing chord . The objective is to assess the reliability of this numerical method in the framework of the creation of aerodynamic data models in off-design conditions. The mesh is built using the Chimera technique (or overset grids) to gather multiblock, structured, near-wall grids and Cartesian off-body grids. The results are compared to wind tunnel data and show the dramatic increase of accuracy provided by the zonal detached eddy simulation approach in the spoiler area compared to a standard steady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation using the Spalart–Allmaras model. Furthermore, the zonal detached eddy simulation gives insights on the unsteady properties of the turbulent structures downstream of the spoiler, which is of major importance in the aerodynamic design process of an aircraft related to tail buffet.