Flexibility and Efficiency of a Transport-Equation Turbulence Model for Three-Dimensional Flow

For the prediction of the aerodynamic performance of aircraft or aircraft components, the modeling of the viscous, in particular the turbulent effects is of ever increasing importance. In order to improve the quality of numerical simulations of complex configurations, a more general description of the fluid dynamics as well as a high flexibility in relation to the topology of the computation and high numerical efficiency is required. In this work an algebraic turbulence model, the Baldwin-Lomax model, and a transport equation turbulence model, the two-equation k-ω model of Wilcox, are used for the simulation of the flow around a realistic 3-D Wing-Body configuration. Using single and multiblock versions of the same grid, it is shown that the k-ω model delivers the same results, independent of the number or structure of the blocks, whereas the Baldwin-Lomax model does not. In terms of additional costs, the k-ω model required, for the same number of iterations on the same grid, approximately 40% more memory and 50% more time than the Baldwin-Lomax model. Additionally, issues of grid convergence and a surface roughness boundary condition for the k-ω model are also discussed.