Wall-Modeled Large-Eddy Simulations of a Swept Wing with Leading-Edge Ice
The aerodynamic performance of a swept wing derived from the Common Research Model wing with high-fidelity and smooth leading-edge ice shapes is evaluated using wall-modeled large-eddy simulations. Two mesh paradigms are considered within the Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics framework: structured hybrid curvilinear body-fitted/immersed-boundary and unstructured Voronoi. The curvilinear approach models the effect of the ice on the flow through penalty terms and the Voronoi strategy includes the ice representation directly in the mesh.Aerodynamic loads, surface pressure profiles, and skin-friction streamlines are compared against experimental results collected at the Wichita State University wind tunnel at a Mach number of 0.18 and a Reynolds number per mean aerodynamic chord of 1.6 million. For the curvilinear simulations with high-fidelity ice, results are sensitive to spanwise mesh resolution near the leading edge, where insufficient spanwise resolution leads to a spanwise running vortexaft of the high-fidelity ice, which is partially removed with increasing spanwise resolution. For the Voronoi simulations with high-fidelity ice, refining the mesh led to good convergence towards the experimental results with the best case demonstrating a maximum discrepancy of three lift counts relative to the experiment across a range of angles of attack from about 5 to 24 degrees, validating the shrink-wrapping procedure used for the ice. For the smooth ice, the curvilinear approach consistently under-predicted the upper surface suction leading to an under-prediction in lift, but did not demonstrate the pronounced over-prediction in upper surface suction near the leading edge observed in the Voronoi simulations.