Numerical study of a wing-tip vortex using the Euler equations

The issue of excessive diffusion of wing-tip vortex calculations is address ed. In particular, a second order accurate pressure-based finite volume alg orithm was employed to solve the Euler equations for the flow over a NACA 0 012 rectangular wing at an angle of attack of 5 deg. A computational mesh w as constructed that allowed for very localized grid clustering about the wi ng tip and about the vortex centerline over arbitrary downstream distances. Comparisons with existing experimental data show that the vortex strength and core radius are well preserved at a distance of 10 chords downstream fr om the wing leading edge. It is concluded that by employing well-designed c omputational grids, second-order accurate numerical algorithms may present a viable alternative to higher-order schemes in the solution of the tip vor tex problem.