Numerical/experimental study of a wingtip vortex in the near field

Abstract

The near-field behavior of a wingtip vortex flow has been studied computationally and experimentally in an interactive fashion. The computational approach involved using the method of artificial compressibility to solve the three-dimensional, incompressible, Navier-Stokes equations with experimentally determined boundary conditions and a modified Baldwin-Barth turbulence model. Inaccuracies caused by the finite difference technique, grid resolution, and turbulence modeling have been explored. The complete geometry case was computed using 1.5 million grid points and compared with mean velocity measurements on the suction side of the wing and in the near wake. Good agreement between the computed and measured flowfields has been obtained. The velocity distribution in the vortex core compares to within 3% of the experiment.