Numerical Computations of Transonic Flow Phenomena for X-38

Abstract

Three-dimensional transonic Navier-Stokes computations around one of the X-38 configuration variants are used to assess the effects of turbulence models and numerical accuracy on the numerical prediction of static longitudinal coefficients. It is found that both, the Degani-Schiff and the two-equation k-w model do predict the effects of massive flow separation in the junction of winglet and body quite well. However, we find large differences between these models for local turbulent viscosities. Also we observe some discrepancies to the experimentally measured forces for very small and the larger angles of attack.