The R-γ transition prediction model

The Rt turbulence closure (Goldberg 2003) is coupled with an intermittency transport equation, γ, to enable prediction of laminar-to-turbulent flow by-pass transition. The model is not correlation-based and is completely topography-parameter-free, thus ready for use in parallelized Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solvers based on unstructured book-keeping. Several examples compare the R-γ model's performance with experimental data and with predictions by the Langtry–Menter γ-Reθ transition closure (2009). Like the latter, the R-γ model is very sensitive to freestream turbulence levels, limiting its utility for engineering purposes.