Good afternoon fellow Flowheads,
I've been using Flowsim 2012 at home since 2012 to investigate flow over a subsonic aircraft. I was told many years ago that the drag and lift for separated flow at a low separation angle, say 3- 15 degrees, was not accurate because of the internal modeling of the separation.
I know, from wind tunnel testing at work, that this code and it's predecessors Nika and EFD give exceptional results for separation from a bluff body, such as from an R2D2 shape. I bought the code for home use based on those results, even knowing that the results would not be as good at low separation angles.
I'm considering upgrading my SW and Flowsim seats to 2020.
My question is whether the 2020 code will give better low angle separated flow results?
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve,
I think whoever gave you that advice about the flow separation might not have that up on the history of the code. While it's a given the separation prediction is quite tricky and it's tough to make a solid prediction but back in 1999 when the code first came out at swx world in Jan 1999 they where happy to tell you that they had good predictions on the separation line on the "Ahmed" body (car with sloping aft body - adverse pressure gradient). And over the years the code has proven quite good for "industrial aerodynamics" in my experience. For smooth flows I would say it over predicts drag forces and lift is pretty good. I have done complete aircraft (no propellers) and lift is pretty close in the big scheme of things. I have not done a lot work recently but I cant imagine it has gotten worse.