Large-Eddy Simulation of a Wing-Body Junction Flow

Large-eddy simulations of a wing-body junction flow experimentally studied are presented. Wall junction flows are common in engineering applications, but the flow physics at the corners of the junction is not well understood. Moreover, in these types of flows, the performance of the subgrid-scale models frequently used for large-eddy simulations is not well characterized. To address these issues, large-eddy simulations of the wing-body junction are performed, with multiple levels of grid resolution. Two-dimensional turbulent profiles are generated every time step and introduced to the inlet plane of the computation domain to mimic the unsteady turbulent boundary layer. A Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes calculation is used as a precursor to initialize the flowfield of the large-eddy simulations. Then, large-eddy simulations with the Vreman model is performed and the simulation results are analyzed with respect to three specific goals: compare the computed and measured turbulence statistics in the junction region, investigate the flow physics in the corner region, and discuss the potential reasons for the inaccuracies of the subgrid-scale model. The sensitivity of the predicted results to inflow conditions and to subgrid-scale modeling is also investigated.