Computational Analysis of Dual Radius Circulation Control Airfoils

The goal of the work is to use multiple codes and multiple configurations to provide an assessment of the capability of RANS solvers to predict circulation control dual radius airfoil performance and also to identify key issues associated with the computational predictions of these configurations that can result in discrepancies in the predicted solutions. Solutions were obtained for the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) dual radius circulation control airfoil and the General Aviation Circulation Control (GACC) dual radius airfoil. For the GTRI-DR airfoil, two-dimensional structured and unstructured grid computations predicted the experimental trend in sectional lift variation with blowing coefficient very well. Good code to code comparisons between the chordwise surface pressure coefficients and the solution streamtraces also indicated that the detailed flow characteristics were matched between the computations. For the GACC-DR airfoil, two-dimensional structured and unstructured grid computations predicted the sectional lift and chordwise pressure distributions accurately at the no blowing condition. However at a moderate blowing coefficient, although the code to code variation was small, the differences between the computations and experiment were significant. Computations were made to investigate the sensitivity of the sectional lift and pressure distributions to some of the experimental and computational parameters, but none of these could entirely account for the differences in the experimental and computational results. Thus, CFD may indeed be adequate as a prediction tool for dual radius CC flows, but limited and difficult to obtain two-dimensional experimental data prevents a confident assessment at this time.