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Preliminary aircraft design often relies on solutions of the RANS equations to characterize the flow field in the different conditions of interest. Such a procedure usually comes at the expense of costly computations that can hardly be used routinely in the early stages of the design. To overcome this problematic, inviscid flow models are considered as an alternative since the associated computational time is more interesting. The main drawback of these models is their inability to predict aerodynamic drag or flow separation which is of upmost interest to optimize the aircraft for fuel consumption. Viscous corrections can be used with these flow models and offer a fast tool suited for preliminary design.
This study presents a pseudo-time dependent, two-dimensional interacting boundary layer method for compressible flows in external aerodynamics. An inviscid flow is modeled by an unstructured finite-element, full potential solver suited for transonic flow computations. The flow in the immediate wall vicinity and in the wake is distinguished from the external inviscid flow by its viscosity property and is described by the time-dependent, compressible integral boundary layer equations. Steady-state flow solutions in the boundary layer are obtained on a dedicated mesh through a damped Newton scheme and are interfaced with the inviscid solutions through a quasi-simultaneous coupling method. The eN method is used to capture the laminar to turbulent transition. A pseudo-time marching method is presented with time advancement control and spo- radic numerical information update. Results are presented subsequently for attached and mildly separated flows around a symmetrical airfoil, for high angle of attack and low Reynolds number flows. Transonic capabilities are demonstrated on a supercritical airfoil and compared to RANS solutions which constitute the current reference in the domain. Stable convergence and good agreement with reference results is observed for flows with limited separation regions. Expected limitations are shown when the regime approaches stall. Further possible improvements, such as the use of an inverse method and mesh quality improvements are discussed especially for the transonic regime and results are consequently argued.

Viscous-inviscid interaction --- Coupled IBL --- Boundary layer --- Viscous flow --- Separation bubble --- Turbulent flow --- Turbulence --- Transition --- DARFLO --- Shear-lag equation --- Ingénierie, informatique & technologie > Ingénierie aérospatiale