Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation of Airfoil Stall Flows Using High-Order Schemes

An advanced hybrid Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes/large eddy simulation (RANS/LES) turbulence model delayed detached eddy simulation (DDES) is conducted in thispaper to investigate the dynamic stall flows over 3D NACA0012 airfoil at 17 deg, 26 deg, 45 deg, and 60 deg angle of attack (AOA). The spatially filtered unsteady 3D Navier–Stokes equations are solved using a fifth-order weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) reconstruction with a low diffusion E-CUSP (LDE) scheme for the inviscid fluxes and a conservative fourth-order central differencing for the viscous terms. An implicit second-order time marching scheme with dual time stepping is employed to achieve high stability and convergency rate. A 3D flat plate is validated for the DDES model. For quantitative prediction of lift and drag of the stalled NACA0012 airfoil flows, the detached eddy simulation (DES) and DDES achieve much more accurate results than the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) simulation. In addition to the quantitative difference, the DES/DDES and URANS also obtain qualitatively very different unsteady stalled flows of NACA0012 airfoil with different vortical structures and frequencies. This may bring a significantly different prediction if those methods are used for fluid–structural interaction. For comparison purpose, a third-order WENO scheme with a second-order central differencing is also employed for the DDES stalled NACA0012 airfoil flows. Both the third- and fifth-order WENO schemes predict the stalled flow similarly for lift and drag at AOA less than 45 deg, while at AOA of 60 deg, the fifth-order WENO scheme shows better agreement with the experiment than the third-order WENO scheme. The high-order scheme of WENO 5 also resolves more small scales of flow structures than the second-order scheme. The prediction of the stalled airfoil flow using DDES with both the high-order scheme and second-order scheme is overall significantly more accurate than the URANS simulation.