Unsteady Flow Transition Effects on a Transonic Laminar Airfoil

This paper presents a computational study of unsteady transonic effects on a supercritical laminar airfoil using high-order implicit large-eddy simulation. The unsteady transitional flow behavior on a static CAST10-2 airfoil operating at a chord-based Reynolds number of Re-c = 2x10(6), a transonic freestream Mach number of M-infinity = 0.73, and several small angles of attack (0 deg <= alpha <= 1.5 deg) was examined alongside corresponding inviscid simulations. Shock- and boundary-layer behaviors were found to be rather sensitive, producing significant change in shock structure, flow transition location, and laminar separation bubbles over this small range of alpha. One intermediate case exhibited a buffeting phenomenon in which flow transition alternated between two positions, causing pronounced oscillations in the pitching moment.

Automated summary

This paper presents a computational study on the unsteady transonic effects on a supercritical laminar airfoil. The results show that shock and boundary layer behaviors are highly sensitive to the change in angle of attack, leading to significant variations in flow structure and laminar separation bubbles.