Transonic panel method for the full potential equation applied to multicomponent airfoils

The panel method approach is extended to obtain numerical solutions of the full potential equation for transonic flow. This extension is accomplished by adding a field distribution of source singularities to the conventional distribution of singularities over the boundaries of the field. The unknown source distribution in the field is determined by solving the full potential equation. Shock waves are captured automatically by splitting the transformed flux components and applying upwind differencing to the monotonic, supersonic parts. The transonic panel method limits the space discretization to those parts of the flow domain in which the nonlinear compressibility effects are non-negligible. The method is tested by computing the potential flow over single- and multicomponent airfoils.