Numerical Investigation on Shock-Induced Separation Structure of Supercritical Airfoil

Abstract

The supercritical airfoil has been widely applied to large airplanes for sake of high aerodynamic efficiency. But at transonic speeds, the complicated shock-induced separation on the upper surface of supercritical airfoil will change the aerodynamic characteristics. The transonic flows over a typical supercritical airfoil CH were numerically investigated in this paper, in order to analyses different shock-induced separation structure. The two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations were solved with structure grids by utilizing the S-A turbulence model. The computation attack angles of CH airfoil varied from 0oto 4o, Mach numbers varied from 0.74 to 0.82 while Reynolds numbers varied from 3×106to 50×106per airfoil chord. It is shown that with the attack angle increases, the separation bubble occurred on the upper surface first, then the trailing-edge separation occurred, the trailing-edge would separate totally at last. The different separation structure would result in different pressure coefficient distribution and boundary layer thickness.