Computation of turbulent wake flows in variable pressure gradient

Transport aircraft performance is strongly influenced by the effectiveness of high-lift systems. Developing wakes generated by the airfoil elements ar e subjected to strong pressure gradients and can thicken very rapidly, limi ting maximum lift. This paper focuses on the effects of various pressure gr adients on developing symmetric wakes and on the ability of a linear eddy v iscosity model and a nonlinear explicit algebraic stress model to accuratel y predict their downstream evolution. To reduce the uncertainties arising f rom numerical issues when assessing the performance of turbulence models, t hree different numerical codes with the same turbulence models are used. Re sults are compared to available experimental data to assess the accuracy of the computational results. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reser ved.