Transitional separation bubbles and unsteady aspects of aerofoil stall

A time-accurate solution method for the coupled potential flow and integral boundary-layer equations is used to study aerofoils near stall, where laboratory experiments have shown high-amplitude low-frequency oscillations. The laminar-turbulent transition model incorporates,in absolute instability formulation, which allows the transition process in separation bubbles to be sustained in the absence of upstream disturbances, in agreement with recent direct numerical simulations ions. The method is demonstrated to capture large scale flow oscillations With Strouhal numbers and amplitudes comparable to experiments. The success or this particular physical model Suggests that bubble bursting is primarily due to a potential flow/boundary-layer interaction effect, in which relatively simple models of boundary layer transition and turbulence suffice to describe the key phenomena.