Constrained large-eddy simulation and detached eddy simulation of flow past a commercial aircraft at 14 degrees angle of attack

With the development of computational power and numerical algorithms, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become an important strategy for the design of aircraft, which significantly reduces the reliance on wind-tunnel and flight tests. In this paper, we conducted a numerical investigation on the flow past a full commercial aircraft at Mach number 0.2 and 14 degrees angle of attack by means of Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), detached-eddy simulation (DES) and our newly developed constrained large-eddy simulation (CLES). The objective of this paper is to study the capability of these models in simulating turbulent flows. To our knowledge, this is the first large-eddy simulation method for full commercial aircraft simulation. The results show that the CLES can predict the mean statistical quantities well, qualitatively consistent with traditional methods, and can capture more small-scale structures near the surface of the aircraft with massive separations. Our study demonstrates that CLES is a promising alternative for simulating real engineering turbulent flows.