Similarities in Massive Separation Across Reynolds Numbers for Swept and Tapered Finite Span Wings

Abstract

Experimental investigations were performed to elucidate the features of flow fields occurring over cantilevered finite-aspect ratio NACA 0015 wings at high angles of attack with various sweep angles and taper ratios. Volumetric Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry experiments were performed at mean chord based Reynolds number of 247,500 in a wind tunnel and 600 in a water tunnel. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of the water tunnel test section, including the cantilevered model, were also performed at the lower Reynolds number. The low Reynolds number experiments, low Reynolds number simulations, and high Reynolds number experiments all showed that sweeping the leading edge back shifted the largest portion of the reversed flow towards the wingtip while sweeping the trailing edge forward shifted the reversed flow towards the wing root. A detailed parametric sweep of planform geometry systematically varied the leading and trailing edge sweep angles and taper ratios of the finite wings. It was found that the large scale vortical structures resulting from varying these parameters at the two Reynolds numbers share surprisingly many three-dimensional topological features, despite the orders of magnitude different Reynolds numbers.