Calibration and verification of a γ - Reθt transition prediction method for airfoil computations

This paper deals with the implementation and verification of a γ - Reθt correlation based transition prediction method previously presented by Langtry et al. The two additional transport equations used for predicting transition and a novel set of equations for the production terms are implemented into the Computational Fluid Dynamics code Edge. The model predicts two-dimensional transition phenomena such as transition due to Tollmein-Schlichting instabilities, bypass transition and separation induced transition. The transition prediction model is calibrated to the well-known Ercoftac wind tunnel tests using an optimization program based on a direct search method available in Matlab. The model is tested with several non-calibrated cases comparable with industry standard airfoils (low speed, transonic) and wind tunnel experiments as well as the MSES code that uses a en method. The main part of this work was performed as part of the research project Aerodynamic Loads Estimation at Extremes of the Flight Envelope (ALEF) (Grant Agreement no: 211785), 7th EU framework program.