Large Eddy Simulation of Flow Around an Airfoil Near Stall

Large-eddy simulation is used to study the stalling behaviour of a NACA0012 airfoil at low Reynolds number. The method is validated against direct numerical simulation for an airfoil test case with a transitional separation bubble. The role of the sub grid model is considered together with explicit filtering and it is found that results are improved when both methods are used in combination. Large fluctuations in lift coefficient are observed during the initial stages of calculations near stall and it is found that these are sensitive to the spanwise extent of the computational domain.