Airfoils with separation and the resulting wakes

Abstract

A viscous/inviscid interaction method is described and has been used to calculate flows around four distinctly different airfoils as a function of angle of attack. It comprises an inviscid-flow method based on conformal mapping, a boundary-layer procedure based on the numerical solution of differential equations and an algebraic eddy viscosity. The results are in close agreement with experiment up to angles close to stall. In one case, where the airfoil thickness is large, small difficulties were experienced and are described. The method is shown to be capable of obtaining results with large flow separation and quantifies the role of transition on the lift coefficient.