3.1 Navier–Stokes equations

The incompressible Navier–Stokes (N–S) equations in the generalized curvilinear coordinates are

(3.1) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}U^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}=0, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(3.2) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(\sqrt{g}u_{i})}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}+\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}F_{i}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}=0, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $U^{m}$ (the volume flux normal to the surface of constant $\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}$ ) and $F_{i}^{m}$ are given by

(3.3) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \left.\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}\displaystyle U^{m}=\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{j}}u_{j},\\ \displaystyle F_{i}^{m}=U^{m}u_{i}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{i}}p-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}u_{i}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}},\\ \displaystyle \sqrt{g}=J^{-1}=\det \left[\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{i}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{j}}\right],\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}=\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{r}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{r}},\end{array}\right\} & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $p$ is the pressure, $u_{i}$ is the velocity in the Cartesian coordinates, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ is the kinematic viscosity, $J^{-1}$ is the Jacobian of the transformation, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}$ is the mesh skewness tensor.

Applying a nominal filter to the N–S equations, the filtered LES equations have a form similar to (3.1) and (3.2), and are written below in terms of the resolved velocity field,

(3.4) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \tilde{U} ^{m}=\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{j}}\tilde{u} _{j}, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(3.5) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \tilde{F}_{i}^{m}=\tilde{U} ^{m}\tilde{u} _{i}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{i}}\tilde{p}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} _{i}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{j}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{ij}, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where ${\sim}$ denote filtered quantities, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{ij}=\widetilde{u_{i}u_{j}}-\tilde{u} _{i}\tilde{u} _{j}$ is the SGS stress tensor.

3.2 Near-wall filtering

Following Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009), we define two near-wall filters in the near-wall region,

(3.6) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \tilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D702},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)=\iint \unicode[STIX]{x1D719}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D702},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)G(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{\prime },\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{f})G(\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}^{\prime },\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{f})\,\text{d}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{\prime }\,\text{d}\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}^{\prime }, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(3.7) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \langle \unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\rangle =\frac{1}{h}\int _{0}^{h}\tilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D702},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)\,\text{d}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}, & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where (3.6) and (3.7) define the wall-parallel filter and the wall-normal averaging filter, respectively. The planar filtering (with filtering function $G$ ) is purely formal; we do not perform such a filtering operation and indeed no explicit filtering of the velocity or pressure fields is employed in the present approach. It should be noted that, consistent with other approaches involving body-fitted mesh computations, the computational mesh is constrained to be locally orthogonal to the airfoil surface for wall-normal averaging, and the wall-normal distance is denoted as $y_{n}$ . As shown in figure 2, the distance, $h$ above is typically chosen as the distance of the first grid point from the airfoil surface or the solid wall; and $h_{0}$ is the height of the virtual wall that is further discussed below. Applying the wall-parallel filter (3.6) to the momentum equations (3.2), we obtain

(3.8a ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=-\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\widetilde{U^{m}u}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x}\tilde{p}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}\right), & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(3.8b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{v}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=-\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\widetilde{U^{m}v}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}y}\tilde{p}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{v}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}\right), & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(3.8c ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & \displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{w}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=-\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\widetilde{U^{m}w}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}z}\tilde{p}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{w}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}\right), & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

$(u,v,w)=(u_{1},u_{2},u_{3})$

3.3 Inner scaling assumption and governing equation for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}$

The virtual wall model formulation is essentially based on the inner scaling ansatz, which states that the near-wall turbulent statistics are characterized by the kinematic viscosity $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ and the local friction velocity $u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}(x,y,z,t)$ . For attached boundary layers, the inner scaling ansatz works well until the end of the log-law region ( $15\,\%$ of boundary layer thickness and somewhat less for APG boundary layers), which is certainly sufficient for WMLES. For separated flows, a modified wall model, still essentially based on the inner scaling ansatz, was successfully tested by Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015) for a flat-plate turbulent boundary layer with separation/reattachment.

Presently, we define the magnitude of the resultant velocity $\tilde{q}$ and velocity angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ on the wall-parallel plane as

(3.9a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{q}=\sqrt{\tilde{u} _{s}^{2}+\tilde{w}^{2}},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}=\arccos (\tilde{u} _{s}/\tilde{q}), & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\tilde{u} _{s}$ is the streamwise velocity along the airfoil surface (as shown in figure 2),

(3.10) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{u} _{s}=\tilde{u} \cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}+\tilde{v}\sin \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}$ denotes the local angle between the airfoil surface and the $x$ -coordinate. We assume $\tilde{q}$ follows inner scaling, i.e.

(3.11) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{q}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D702},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)=u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)F(y_{n}^{+}),\quad y_{n}^{+}=u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}y_{n}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $F(y_{n}^{+})$ is an unknown function of the normal distance from the airfoil in wall units, $u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}$ is the friction velocity and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)$ is the wall-normal gradient of $\tilde{q}$ defined as

(3.12) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}\equiv \left.\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{q}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}y_{n}}\right|_{w}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

The following ODEs can then be derived as

(3.13a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}=\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}{2u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}}=\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}},\quad \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}y_{n}^{+}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}=\frac{y_{n}^{+}}{2\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

Figure 2.

Sketch of the near-wall velocity components. The dashed line upon the solid wall denotes the virtual wall, and the blue point denotes the centre of the first grid cell off the solid wall.

Applying the wall-normal averaging filter (3.7) to the governing equation of $\tilde{q}$ results in

(3.14) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\langle q\rangle }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=\frac{\tilde{q}|_{h}}{2\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\tilde{q}|_{h}=u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}F(h^{+})$ is the resolved resultant velocity at a distance $h$ from the solid wall (see figure 2). It should be noted that (3.14) is an exact consequence of (3.7) and (3.11). Moreover, an explicit form of $F(y_{n}^{+})$ is not required owing to cancellation.

From the definition of $\tilde{q}$ , (3.9), we have

(3.15) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\langle q\rangle }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=\frac{1}{h}\int _{0}^{h}\left(\frac{\tilde{u} _{s}}{\tilde{q}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} _{s}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}+\frac{\tilde{w}}{\tilde{q}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{w}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}\right)\text{d}y_{n}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

Some terms in the above equation may be analytically integrated (see details in appendix A). Then combining (3.14) and (3.15), we arrive at the governing equation for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}$ ,

(3.16) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t}=C_{1}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}-C_{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}^{2}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where

(3.17a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle C_{1}=\frac{2}{\tilde{q}|_{h}}\left(F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}}+F\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}+M\left.\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,22}}{\sqrt{g}h}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{q}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}y_{n}}\right|_{h}\right),\quad C_{2}=\frac{2\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,22}}{\sqrt{g}h\tilde{q}|_{h}}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

Detailed expressions for $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}}$ , $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}}$ and $M$ are given by equations (A 3) and (A 5) and (A 7), respectively, in appendix A.

3.4 Near-wall treatment and solution of the ODE

On the right-hand side of (3.17), $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}}$ , $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}}$ and $M$ are unknown, both of which are estimated by resolved-scale quantities at the first grid point $(y_{n}=h)$ above the wall. For example, the first term on the right-hand side of (A 3) is approximated by LES resolved-scale values at $y_{n}=h$ as

(3.18) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle & & \displaystyle -\frac{1}{h}\int _{0}^{h}\frac{\tilde{u} _{s}}{\tilde{q}}\frac{\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}}{\sqrt{g}}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}\left(\widetilde{U^{1}u}+\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x}\tilde{p}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,11}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}\right)\text{d}y_{n}\nonumber\\ \displaystyle & & \displaystyle \quad \approx \left.-\frac{\tilde{u} _{s}}{\tilde{q}}\frac{\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}}{\sqrt{g}}\right|_{h}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}\left[\widetilde{U^{1}u}|_{h}+\left.\left(\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x}\tilde{p}\right)\right|_{h}-\left.\left(\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,11}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\tilde{u} }{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}\right)\right|_{h}\right],\end{eqnarray}$$

where

(3.19) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \left.\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}\displaystyle \widetilde{U^{1}u}|_{h}=\left.\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{1}}\widetilde{uu}\right|_{h}+\left.\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{2}}\widetilde{uv}\right|_{h}+\left.\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{1}}{\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x_{3}}\widetilde{uw}\right|_{h},\\ \displaystyle \widetilde{uu}|_{h}\approx \tilde{u} \tilde{u} |_{h}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xx}|_{h},\widetilde{uv}|_{h}\approx \tilde{u} \tilde{v}|_{h}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xy}|_{h},\widetilde{uw}|_{h}\approx \tilde{u} \tilde{w}|_{h}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xz}|_{h},\end{array}\right\} & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xx}$ , $\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xy}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{xz}$ are the SGS stress tensor components (discussed in § 4.1). The other terms in $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}}$  (A 3) and $F_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}}$  (A 5) and $M$  (A 7) are approximated in a similar manner.

If coefficients $C_{1}$ and $C_{2}$ in equation (3.16) are weakly dependent on $t$ , then assuming these to be constant, equation (3.16) may be interpreted as a second-order linear ODE for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}$ which can be solved analytically (details are in appendix B).

Once $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)$ is known, and the velocity angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D709},\unicode[STIX]{x1D701},t)$ is estimated as $\arccos (\tilde{u} _{s}|_{h}/\tilde{q}|_{h})$ (meaning that streamline orientation on the virtual wall is determined by the first grid cell from the resolved LES field, an approximation justified below based on the work of Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015)), the local wall shear stress components may then be computed as

(3.20a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,z}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}\sin \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

Here $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ is the dynamic viscosity, and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D749}_{w}\equiv (\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,z})$ is the LES representation of the surface stress vector. Above, we make the approximation that the velocity angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ is assumed to be constant within the first grid cell, $0\leqslant y_{n}\leqslant h$ . Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015) proposed an algebraic model for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ in turbulent boundary layer simulations and concluded that there is little difference between the constant velocity angle model and the algebraic model. In the present paper, the constant velocity angle model is adopted for simplicity.

3.5 Slip velocity boundary conditions

Once $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}$ is solved using (3.16), we complete the wall model with a slip velocity at a raised virtual wall plane located at $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}=h_{0}$ , which scales with the boundary layer thickness but remains small, i.e.  $h_{0}\leqslant 0.1\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}$ . Typically, $h_{0}$ is chosen as a small fraction of the near-wall cell size. In previous studies, both in channel flow by Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009) and turbulent boundary layer flows (ZPG and APG) by Inoue & Pullin (Reference Inoue and Pullin2011) and Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015), $h_{0}/\unicode[STIX]{x0394}\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}=0.18$ is fixed with respect to the first off-wall grid cell and the sensitivity to changes was documented in Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009). Their verifications and validations capture the near-wall flow physics well, and we follow this choice in the present research.

We model the resultant slip velocity $\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}$ on the virtual wall as

(3.21) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}=\left\{\begin{array}{@{}ll@{}}\!\left\{\begin{array}{@{}ll@{}}u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}\left(\frac{1}{\mathscr{K}_{1}}\log \left(\frac{h_{0}^{+}}{h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+}}\right)+h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+}\right),\quad & h_{0}^{+}>h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+},\\ u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}h_{0}^{+},\quad & h_{0}^{+}<h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+},\end{array}\right.\quad & \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s}>0,\\ \quad u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}h_{0}^{+},\quad & \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s}\leqslant 0,\end{array}\right. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $h_{0}^{+}=u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}h_{0}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ , $h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+}$ is the intercept between the linear and log components in the law of the wall. Experimental research shows that the outer edge of the viscous sublayer is located at $h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+}\approx 11$ , which is approximately equivalent to the offset $(=5.0)$ in the classical log law. This value was adopted by Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009) and Inoue & Pullin (Reference Inoue and Pullin2011), and also by Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015) in modelling the turbulent boundary layer flows with separation and reattachment. Presently, $h_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{+}=11$ is used as an empirical parameter in the wall model. In the attached region ( $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s}>0$ ), the linear–log relation is essentially the same as Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009), which is derived from stretched-vortex SGS model (discussed below) based on the detached/attached eddy concepts of Townsend (Reference Townsend1976). The Kármán-like constant $\mathscr{K}_{1}$ is dynamically computed (refer to Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009) for more details). In the separated region, ( $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w,s}\leqslant 0$ ), the log-like relation is no longer valid and Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015) proposed a linear relationship which appears to work reasonably well in regions of flow separation. Presently, we follow the linear law by Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015).

3.6 Summary of the wall model

The wall model is summarized as follows: in the near-wall region, equation (3.16) is solved for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}_{0}$ , in which the coefficients on the right-hand side are approximated with the resolved LES field at the first grid cell, i.e.  $h=h_{0}+\unicode[STIX]{x0394}y_{n}/2$ , equation (3.21) is then used to compute the resultant velocity $\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}$ on the virtual wall with the streamwise and spanwise velocity components given by

(3.22a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{u} _{s}|_{h_{0}}=\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703},\quad \tilde{w}|_{h_{0}}=\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}\sin \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

The contribution of the wall-normal velocity component $\tilde{u} _{n}|_{h_{0}}$ to $\tilde{u}$ and $\tilde{v}$ is assumed to be small compared with $\tilde{u} _{s}|_{h_{0}}$ , and presently we use $\tilde{u} _{n}|_{h_{0}}=0$ . Finally, the slip velocity boundary condition on the virtual wall $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}=h_{0}$ is

(3.23a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \tilde{u} |_{h_{0}}=\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w},\quad \tilde{v}|_{h_{0}}=\tilde{q}|_{h_{0}}\cos \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\sin \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{w}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

with the spanwise velocity component $\tilde{w}|_{h_{0}}$ given by (3.22).

4.1 Stretched-vortex SGS model

The stretched-vortex SGS model has been previously widely deployed in LES of wall-bounded turbulent flows by Pullin and co-workers. Here, for the sake of completeness, we present the essential features of this structure-based SGS model, which assumes that the turbulent fine scales are composed of tube-like structures with spiral vortices (Lundgren Reference Lundgren1982). In each computational cell, the ensemble dynamics is dominated by a stretched vortex with orientation  $\boldsymbol{e}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}$ , taken from a delta-function probability density function (Misra & Pullin Reference Misra and Pullin1997). Consequently, the SGS stress tensor $\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{ij}$ is modelled as (Chung & Pullin Reference Chung and Pullin2009)

(4.1a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{ij}=(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{ij}-e_{i}^{v}e_{j}^{v})K,\quad K=\int _{k_{c}}^{\infty }E(k)\,\text{d}k, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $K$ is the SGS kinetic energy, $k_{c}=\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{c}$ is the cutoff wavenumber ( $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{c}=(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{y}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{z})^{1/3}$ ) and $E(k)$ is the SGS energy spectrum given by Lundgren (Reference Lundgren1982). The integration of the energy spectrum gives

(4.2a-d ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle K={\textstyle \frac{1}{2}}{\mathcal{K}}_{0}^{\prime }\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}[-1/3,\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}_{c}^{2}],\quad {\mathcal{K}}_{0}^{\prime }={\mathcal{K}}_{0}\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}^{2/3}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{v}^{2/3},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{v}=(2\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}/3|\tilde{a}|)^{1/2},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D705}_{c}=k_{c}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{v},\qquad \quad & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ is the incomplete gamma function, $\tilde{a}=e_{i}^{v}e_{j}^{v}\tilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D61A}}_{ij}$ is the stretching felt along the subgrid vortex axis imposed by the resolved scales and $\tilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D61A}}_{ij}$ is the resolved SGS strain tensor. The composite parameter ${\mathcal{K}}_{0}^{\prime }$ is obtained dynamically by structure-function matching at the grid-scale cutoff (Voelkl, Pullin & Chan Reference Voelkl, Pullin and Chan2000), i.e.  ${\mathcal{K}}_{0}^{\prime }=\langle F_{2}\rangle /\langle Q(\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}_{c},d)\rangle$ , where $\langle .\rangle$ denotes a local-averaging operator computed from the neighbouring $26$ points, $F_{2}$ is the second-order velocity structure function from the resolved LES field, and the calculation of $Q(\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}_{c},d)$ is similar to Voelkl et al. (Reference Voelkl, Pullin and Chan2000), Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009) with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}_{c}=r/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{c}$ and $r$ is the distance from the neighbouring point to the vortex axis.

The stretched-vortex SGS model coupled with the virtual wall model have been together applied to several canonical turbulent flows relevant to the present flow: Chung & Pullin (Reference Chung and Pullin2009) for turbulent channel flow; Inoue & Pullin (Reference Inoue and Pullin2011) for turbulent boundary layer flow at arbitrarily large $Re$ ; Inoue et al. (Reference Inoue, Mathis, Marusic and Pullin2012) for combining a predictive-wall model with LES; Inoue et al. (Reference Inoue, Pullin, Harun and Marusic2013) for adverse-pressure turbulent boundary layers; Saito et al. (Reference Saito, Pullin and Inoue2012), Saito & Pullin (Reference Saito and Pullin2014) and Sridhar, Pullin & Cheng (Reference Sridhar, Pullin and Cheng2017) for rough-wall turbulent boundary layers; Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2015) for separated–reattached turbulent boundary layers. However, all the previous works based on this approach are applied to simple canonical geometries. The extension and testing of the models to complex geometries are necessary to pave the way to more engineering applications.

4.2 Numerical method

The governing equations (3.4) and (3.5) are discretized as

(4.3) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \left.\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\tilde{U} ^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}=0,\\ \displaystyle \sqrt{g}\frac{\tilde{u} _{i}^{n+1}-\tilde{u} _{i}^{n}}{\unicode[STIX]{x0394}t}=\frac{3}{2}(C_{i}^{n}+S_{i}^{n})-\frac{1}{2}(C_{i}^{n-1}+S_{i}^{n-1})+R_{i}(\,\tilde{p}^{n+1})+D_{i}(\tilde{u} ^{n+1}),\end{array}\right\} & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}$ represents the energy conservative fourth-order finite difference operator (Morinishi et al. Reference Morinishi, Lund, Vasilyev and Moin1998), $C_{i}$ and $S_{i}$ represent the convective term and SGS term, $D_{i}$ and $R_{i}$ are discrete operators for the viscous term and the pressure gradient term, respectively. These quantities are

(4.4) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \left.\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}\displaystyle C_{i}=-\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}(\tilde{U} ^{m}\tilde{u} _{i}),\quad S_{i}=-\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}x_{j}}\unicode[STIX]{x1D61B}_{ij}\right),\\ \displaystyle R_{i}=-\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\sqrt{g}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}x_{i}}\right),\quad D_{i}=\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{m}}\left(\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}\unicode[STIX]{x1D60E}^{\,mn}\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}^{n}}\right),\end{array}\right\} & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where the convective term is computed in the skew-symmetric form to minimize the aliasing error (Zang Reference Zang1991; Morinishi et al. Reference Morinishi, Lund, Vasilyev and Moin1998). The fractional step method (Zang, Street & Koseff Reference Zang, Street and Koseff1994; Zhang et al. Reference Zhang, Cheng, Gao, Qamar and Samtaney2015) is used to solve the governing equations. This method follows the predictor–corrector procedure, and the pressure Poisson equation is solved using the multigrid method with line-relaxed Gauss–Seidel as a smoother. The code is parallelized using standard MPI-protocol. To achieve near-optimal load balancing, the mesh is divided into blocks of equal size and each of them is assigned to a unique processor. All the simulations are performed on the Shaheen-Cray XC40 at KAUST. The DNS code (without the SGS stress terms) with the same method is described in Zhang et al. (Reference Zhang, Cheng, Gao, Qamar and Samtaney2015) for flow past an airfoil, and is the one used for verification in the low $Re_{c}$ case in the present paper. The WRLES code with the same method was previously applied successfully in flow past smooth and grooved cylinders (Cheng et al. Reference Cheng, Pullin, Samtaney, Zhang and Gao2017, Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2018a ).

Figure 3.

Sketch of the numerical set-up and computational domain.

Table 2.

Summary of the performed numerical cases.

4.3 Numerical set-up

The numerical set-up and domain size are illustrated in figure 3. It should be noted that a sufficiently long spanwise domain size ( $L_{z}$ ) is important for the proper development of 3-D turbulent structures, and the associated turbulent statistics. Kitsios et al. (Reference Kitsios, Cordier, Bonnet, Ooi and Soria2011) performed LES of flow past the NACA0015 airfoil at $Re_{c}=3\times 10^{4}$ with different $L_{z}$ and found that $L_{z}=0.66C$ was adequate. It was concluded that the impact of large-scale structures reduces as $Re_{c}$ increases. Zhang & Samtaney (Reference Zhang and Samtaney2016) presented a comprehensive assessment of domain size effects in DNS of flow past the NACA0012 airfoil at $Re_{c}=5\times 10^{4}$ , and recommended a spanwise size of $L_{z}=0.8C$ . It is found that a smaller $L_{z}$ tends to under-predict the turbulent fluctuations near the separation point but over-predict them inside the separation bubble. Presently, $L_{z}=0.8C$ is adopted in all the simulations to enforce the correct spanwise periodicity and capture large-scale turbulent structures. It is by far the largest spanwise extent in LES of airfoil flows at high $Re_{c}$ (see table 1).

For boundary conditions, a uniform flow $(\tilde{u} ,\tilde{v},\tilde{w})=(U_{\infty },0,0)$ , $U_{\infty }=1$ is imposed at the inlet, and the convective boundary condition $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\boldsymbol{u}/\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t+U_{B}\unicode[STIX]{x2202}\boldsymbol{u}/\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x=0$ is used at the outflow plane, where $U_{B}$ is the bulk velocity. The slip velocity from the wall model is specified at the virtual wall, and the periodic boundary condition is assumed in the spanwise direction.

Three cases as summarized in table 2 are performed to verify and validate the wall model. The low $Re_{c}$ case (NACA0012, $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ , $AoA=5^{\circ }$ ) is performed with both DNS and WMLES, and the numerical results from DNS are utilized to verify the performance of the wall model at low $Re_{c}$ . To check the effects of mesh resolution on the WMLES, a mesh convergence study of this case with WMLES is presented in appendix C. For the higher Reynolds number cases, DNS becomes computationally prohibitive, and for these cases we compare results from WMLES with experiments with an emphasis on strong validation. This somewhat limits our choice of experiments to those which have presented skin-friction coefficient and Reynolds stress components. The relatively moderate $Re_{c}$ case (NACA0018, $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ , $AoA=5^{\circ }$ ) is validated with the experimental results from Boutilier & Yarusevych (Reference Boutilier and Yarusevych2012) and Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017). The Aérospatiale A-airfoil near stall condition ( $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ , $AoA=13.3^{\circ }$ ) is a benchmark case from the Brite-Euram project LESFOIL (Mellen, Frögrave & Rodi Reference Mellen, Frögrave and Rodi2003; Mary & Sagaut Reference Mary and Sagaut2002). This somewhat challenging case has been extensively used to assess RANS and LES models (Schmidt & Thiele Reference Schmidt and Thiele2003; Chaouat Reference Chaouat2006; Kawai & Asada Reference Kawai and Asada2013), and is also for validation in the present paper. In the experiment of the A-airfoil, the boundary layer of the pressure surface is tripped at around $x/C=0.3$ (Dahlstrom & Davidson Reference Dahlstrom and Davidson2001). These trips, whose height is smaller than the first wall-adjacent grid spacing, are not included in the our simulations. The numerical noise would act as the perturbation source, and allow natural transition to turbulence. This choice is same as Park & Moin (Reference Park and Moin2014) in WMLES of the NACA4412 airfoil at $Re_{c}=1.64\times 10^{6}$ , in which reasonable prediction of transition onset was reported without special treatment of the boundary layer trips.

5.1 Comparison between DNS and WMLES: $Re_{c}=10^{4}$

The time- and spanwise-averaged pressure coefficient ( $C_{p}$ ) and skin-friction coefficient ( $C_{f}$ ) are computed as

(5.1a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle C_{p}=\frac{\bar{p}-p_{\infty }}{\frac{1}{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}U_{\infty }^{2}},\quad C_{f}=\frac{\bar{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}_{w,s}}{\frac{1}{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}U_{\infty }^{2}}, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\bar{p}$ and $\bar{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}_{w,s}$ are the time- and spanwise-averaged wall pressure and streamwise wall shear stress, $p_{\infty }$ is the reference pressure taken at the outlet boundary. The $C_{p}$ and $C_{f}$ for this NACA0012 case are shown in figure 4. The present WMLES results compare well with the DNS results with negligible difference. The skin-friction coefficient profile indicates separation and reattachment at $x/C=0.32$ and $x/C=0.98$ , respectively. The streamwise mean velocity profiles at nine locations along the suction surface ( $x/C=0.1{-}0.9$ with equal distances of $0.1$ ) are shown in figure 5. The present WMLES results indicate that its prediction of both separation and reattachment are in good agreement with that of the DNS predictions.

Colour contours of time- and spanwise-averaged off-diagonal Reynolds stress $-\overline{u^{\prime }v^{\prime }}/U_{0}^{2}$ within the range $[0.001,0.06]$ superimposed on average streamline contours are shown in figure 6. Here the threshold value of $0.001$ is chosen as an indicator for transition onset, which is commonly used in various numerical (Zhou & Wang Reference Zhou and Wang2012) and experimental investigations (Buchmannand, Atkinson & Soria Reference Buchmannand, Atkinson and Soria2013) of flow past bluff bodies. The transition onset occurs near the trailing edge, i.e.  $x/C=0.92$ and $x/C=0.91$ for DNS and WMLES, respectively.

5.2 Validation of WMLES: $Re_{c}=10^{5}$

Figure 7.

NACA0018, $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ . (a) Distribution of the pressure coefficient $C_{p}$ , and (b) skin-friction coefficient $C_{f}$ around the airfoil. ○, experimental data from Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017); ——, corresponding results from the present WMLES; — ⋅ —, $C_{f}$ on the pressure side from the present WMLES. The - - - - line $C_{f}=0$ is shown for convenience: zero crossing of this line indicates separation and reattachment. The experimental values of the separation and reattachment point on the suction side are estimated to be located at $x/C=0.24\pm 0.02,0.52\pm 0.02$ , respectively (Kirk & Yarusevych Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017).

Figure 8.

NACA0018, $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ . The mean velocity profiles in the $x$ -direction,  $u$ along the vertical lines at different locations of the suction side. From left to right, (a)  $x/\bar{C}=0.2{-}0.48$ with equal distances of $0.02$ , shifted by $0,2,\ldots ,28$ ; (b)  $x/\bar{C}=0.50,0.52,0.54,0.56,0.60,0.66,0.73,0.87$ , shifted by $0,2,\ldots ,14$ . ——, present WMLES; ○, experimental data from Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017) and Boutilier & Yarusevych (Reference Boutilier and Yarusevych2012).

The pressure coefficient $C_{p}$ and skin-friction coefficient $C_{f}$ for the NACA0018 case are shown in figure 7. The WMLES $C_{p}$ results compare well with the experiment. The separation and reattachment on the pressure side occur at $x/C=0.67,0.99$ , and $x/C=0.21,0.45$ on the suction side. In the experiment by Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017), the separation and reattachment points on the suction side are estimated to be located at $x/C=0.24\pm 0.02,0.52\pm 0.02$ : these are inferred indirectly from the pressure distributions – a flat distribution is expected within the recirculating region. The trailing edge separation on the pressure side is not investigated in the experimental research, however, our WMLES predicts a trailing edge separation on the pressure side, in qualitative agreement with another experiment by Nakano et al. (Reference Nakano, Fujisawa and Lee2006) with the same airfoil geometry but slightly different $Re_{c}(=1.6\times 10^{5})$ and $AoA(=6^{\circ })$ .

Figure 9.

NACA0018, $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ . The Reynolds stress profiles, $\sqrt{\overline{u^{\prime }u^{\prime }}}/U_{\infty }$ along the vertical lines at different locations of the suction side. From left to right, (a)  $x/\bar{C}=0.2{-}0.48$ with equal distances of $0.02$ , shifted by $0,0.3,\ldots ,4.2$ ; (b)  $x/\bar{C}=0.50,0.52,0.54,0.56,0.60,0.66,0.73,0.87$ , shifted by $0,0.3,\ldots ,2.1$ . ——, present WMLES; ○, experimental data from Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017) and Boutilier & Yarusevych (Reference Boutilier and Yarusevych2012).

The mean velocity profiles in the $x$ -direction at different locations along the suction surface ( $x/\bar{C}=0.2{-}0.48$ with equal distances of $0.02$ ) are shown in figure 8(a), here $\bar{C}$ is the $x$ -axis projection of the chord length. The mean velocity profiles in the attached zone, i.e.  $x/\bar{C}=0.50,0.52,0.54,0.56,0.60,0.66,0.73,0.87$ are shown in figure 8(b). Good agreement between our WMLES results and the experiment is noted.

The Reynolds stress component, $\sqrt{\overline{u^{\prime }u^{\prime }}}/U_{\infty }$ , on the suction side is shown in figure 9, at the same locations as the mean velocity profiles. The LES results match quite well with the experimental data in the range of $[0.2,0.38]$ and $[0.5,0.87]$ . We note difference between LES and experiments in the range of $[0.38,0.48]$ , close to the reattachment point. It should be emphasized that both the present LES and experiments in this range show a sharp drop in pressure coefficient distributions (see figure 7 a). This sharp drop may be explained by examining the LES results in detail: it is attributed to a separation bubble connected by turbulent transition as observed in the skin-friction plot in figure 7(b). It is reported in the experiment by Kirk & Yarusevych (Reference Kirk and Yarusevych2017) that the onset of turbulent transition occurs at $x/C=0.44\pm 0.02$ , discerned from the dip in the $C_{p}$ -profile. The WMLES shows larger fluctuations at locations $x/C\in [0.38,0.48]$ in comparison with the experiment, and the source of this difference remains to be explored further.

5.3 Validation of WMLES: high $Re_{c}$ case, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$

The time- and spanwise-averaged $C_{f}$ and $C_{p}$ for the high Reynolds number case of the A-airfoil are shown in figure 10 for the present WMLES, the experiment by Gleyzes (Reference Gleyzes1988) and also WRLES results by Mary & Sagaut (Reference Mary and Sagaut2002) and Asada & Kawai (Reference Asada and Kawai2018). The pressure coefficient compares well with the experiment, and the separation near the trailing edge, as indicated by $C_{f}$ -plot (see figure 10 b), is also well captured by the present WMLES. The trailing edge separation occurs at approximately $x/\bar{C}=0.90$ compared with the experimental observation ( $x/\bar{C}\approx 0.82$ ) (Gleyzes Reference Gleyzes1988). In the experiment a tiny separation bubble close to the leading edge, which reattaches at $x/\bar{C}=0.12$ is observed. In the present WMLES, although instantaneous velocity contours clearly show a local reversal flow in this region, the time- and spanwise-averaged $C_{f}$ does not capture this tiny separation bubble.

The streamwise mean velocity profiles on the suction side are shown in figure 11. The flow reversal in the separation zone ( $x/\bar{C}=0.93,0.99$ ) is well captured by the WMLES. The Reynolds stress profiles corresponding to the root mean square (r.m.s.) streamwise fluctuations, wall-normal fluctuations and off-diagonal terms are shown in figure 12. Overall the WMLES predicted values of the Reynolds stress components are in general agreement and follow the trends in the experimental data.

Figure 10.

Aérospatiale A-airfoil, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . (a) Distribution of the pressure coefficient $C_{p}$ , and (b) skin-friction coefficient $C_{f}$ on the suction surface. ○, experimental data from Gleyzes (Reference Gleyzes1988);  $\times$ , WRLES from Mary & Sagaut (Reference Mary and Sagaut2002);  $+$ , WRLES from Asada & Kawai (Reference Asada and Kawai2018); ——, present WMLES. The - - - - line $C_{f}=0$ is shown for convenience: zero crossing of this line indicates separation and reattachment.

Figure 11.

Aérospatiale A-airfoil, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . The mean streamwise velocity profiles, $u_{s}$ along the wall-normal lines at different locations of the suction side. From left to right, $x/\bar{C}=0.3,0.5,0.7,0.825,0.87,0.93,0.99$ . Profiles are shifted by $0,2,\ldots ,12$ for clarity. ○, experimental data from Gleyzes (Reference Gleyzes1988); ——, present WMLES. Note that the profiles on the left-hand side of the vertical dashed lines use the left $y$ -axis, while the others use the right $y$ -axis.

Figure 12.

Aérospatiale A-airfoil, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . The Reynolds stress profiles, (a)  $\sqrt{\overline{u_{s}^{\prime }u_{s}^{\prime }}}/U_{\infty }$ , (b)  $\sqrt{\overline{u_{n}^{\prime }u_{n}^{\prime }}}/U_{\infty }$ and (c)  $\overline{u_{s}^{\prime }u_{n}^{\prime }}/U_{\infty }^{2}$ along the wall-normal lines at different locations of the suction side. From left to right, $x/\bar{C}=0.3,0.5,0.7,0.825,0.87,0.93,0.99$ . Profiles are shifted by $0,0.3,\ldots ,1.8$ in (a) and (b), and shifted by $0,0.1,\ldots ,0.6$ in (c) for clarity. ○, experimental data from Gleyzes (Reference Gleyzes1988); ——, present WMLES.

6.1 Definition of anisotropy

The non-dimensional anisotropy tensor introduced by Lumley & Newman (Reference Lumley and Newman1977) and Lumley (Reference Lumley1979) is defined as

(6.1) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ij}=\overline{u_{i}^{\prime }u_{j}^{\prime }}/\overline{u_{k}^{\prime }u_{k}^{\prime }}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{ij}/3. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

It has a zero trace ( $\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ii}=0$ ) and is characterized by two invariants, viz.,

(6.2a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle II=-\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ij}\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ij}/2,\quad III=\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ij}\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{jk}\unicode[STIX]{x1D623}_{ki}/3, & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

which allow a simple graphical evaluation, i.e.  $(III,II)$ -plane, of possible states of turbulence. It is more convenient to identify the anisotropy by

(6.3a,b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D719}=\left(\frac{III}{2}\right)^{1/3},\quad \unicode[STIX]{x1D713}=\left(-\frac{II}{3}\right)^{1/2} & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

(Pope Reference Pope2000). At any location in a turbulent flow, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D713}$ are determined from the Reynolds stress components, which correspond to points in the $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D719},\unicode[STIX]{x1D713})$ -plane, as shown in figure 13. All realizable states of the anisotropy tensor are found within a triangular region in the $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D719},\unicode[STIX]{x1D713})$ -plane, which is the anisotropy invariant map (AIM) and often referred to as the Lumley triangle (figure 13). The origin of the triangle, i.e.  $(0,0)$ corresponds to 3-D isotropic turbulence, the left-hand corner point of the triangle, i.e.  $(-1/6,1/6)$ corresponds to two-component (2C) isotropic turbulence, the right-hand corner point of the triangle, i.e.  $(1/3,1/3)$ corresponds to one-component (1C) turbulence. The turbulence along the upper line connecting the 2C isotropic turbulence and 1C turbulence is the 2C turbulence state, in which

(6.4) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \unicode[STIX]{x1D713}=\left(\frac{1}{27}+2\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}^{3}\right)^{1/2}. & & \displaystyle\end{eqnarray}$$

The left-hand line $\unicode[STIX]{x1D713}=-\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$ and right-hand line $\unicode[STIX]{x1D713}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$ correspond to the ‘axisymmetric contraction’ and ‘axisymmetric expansion’ state, respectively (Choi & Lumley Reference Choi and Lumley2001). This classification of turbulence is formally based on the shape of the energy ellipsoid, and details of the analysis may be obtained from Lumley (Reference Lumley1979).

Figure 13.

NACA0012, $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ . Invariant maps of WMLES results along vertical lines at six locations along the suction surface: (a)  $x/C=0.8$ ; (b)  $x/C=0.9$ ; (c)  $x/C=0.92$ ; (d)  $x/C=0.94$ ; (e)  $x/C=0.96$ ; (f)  $x/C=0.98$ . $\longrightarrow$ denotes the direction away from the airfoil surface. The line partly outside the triangle at the upper boundary is due to the connection of two neighbouring points.

Figure 14.

NACA0012, $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ . Invariant maps of DNS results along vertical lines at six locations along the suction surface: (a)  $x/C=0.8$ ; (b)  $x/C=0.9$ ; (c)  $x/C=0.92$ ; (d)  $x/C=0.94$ ; (e)  $x/C=0.96$ ; (f)  $x/C=0.98$ . $\longrightarrow$ denotes the direction away from the airfoil surface. The line partly outside the triangle at the upper boundary is due to the connection of two neighbouring points.

Figure 15.

NACA0018, $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ . Invariant maps of WMLES results along vertical lines at six locations along the suction surface: (a)  $x/C=0.4$ ; (b)  $x/C=0.45$ ; (c)  $x/C=0.5$ ; (d)  $x/C=0.65$ ; (e)  $x/C=0.8$ ; (f)  $x/C=0.95$ . $\longrightarrow$ denotes the direction away from the airfoil surface. The line partly outside the triangle at the upper boundary in (a) is due to the connection of two neighbouring points.

Figure 16.

A-airfoil, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . Invariant maps of WMLES results along vertical lines at eight locations along the suction surface: (a) $x/C=0.35$ ; (b)  $x/C=0.55$ ; (c)  $x/C=0.70$ ; (d)  $x/C=0.80$ ; (e)  $x/C=0.85$ ; (f)  $x/C=0.90$ ; (g)  $x/C=0.94$ ; (h)  $x/C=0.96$ . $\longrightarrow$ denotes the direction away from the airfoil surface.

The above anisotropy invariants find many uses in the turbulence modelling community. First, they help to define realizable states of the Reynolds stress tensor, i.e. all physically realizable turbulence is bounded in the AIM. Second, it is desirable to ensure that the simulated turbulence field can only pass through a succession of realizable states, which helps improve the anisotropy-resolving turbulence closures especially at second-moment level. Furthermore, the invariants should satisfy some specific relations or bounds at the limiting states.

6.2 Low Reynolds number $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ case

Figures 13 (WMLES) and 14 (DNS) show the loci associated with traversals in the vertical direction at six locations ( $x/C=0.8,0.9,0.92,0.94,0.96,0.98$ ) along the suction surface of the NACA0012 airfoil. Overall, the loci behave similarly in both WMLES and DNS at the same locations. It is observed that all states indeed lie within the triangle, which is required by realizability constraints. For $x/C=0.8$ as shown in figures 13(a) and 14(a), all the turbulence states are concentrated at the right corner of the Lumley triangle. This indicates that most of the turbulence at this location, before the transition onset occurs (see figure 6), corresponds to 1C and 2C turbulence. For the near-wall region, the turbulence state is seen to approach the two-component state at all six locations and then progresses along the ‘axisymmetric expansion’ line (similar to that in the log region of a channel flow (Pope Reference Pope2000)) and ending in the upper portion of the ‘two-component turbulence’ line. However, the manner in which this process takes place varies at different locations. Within the separation zone close to the reattachment point, $x/C=0.92$ and $x/C=0.94$ , some points are close to the ‘axisymmetric contraction’ line, similar to observations in a developed free shear layer (Bell & Mehta Reference Bell and Mehta1990). For flow close to the trailing edge ( $x/C=0.96$ and $x/C=0.98$ ), the upper-right pointing arrow along the ‘axisymmetric expansion’ line (log-law region) signifies a state very different from that in a free shear layer.

6.3 Moderate Reynolds number $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ case

Figure 15 shows the loci associated with traversals in the vertical direction at six locations ( $x/C=0.4,0.45,0.5,0.65,0.8,0.95$ ) along the suction surface of the NACA0018 airfoil. Substantially, the state of turbulence follows the same locus as observed in the NACA0012 case. A point of difference is that most turbulence states are concentrated on the ‘two-component turbulence’ line in the NACA0012 case, while most points concentrate near the ‘axisymmetric expansion’ and ‘axisymmetric contraction’ lines except for the flow in the separation zone ( $x/C=0.4$ ). This is very similar to the observation in the post-recirculation zone of channel flow with periodic hills at $Re_{h}=10\,595$ (Fröhlich et al. Reference Fröhlich, Mellen, Rodi, Temmerman and Leschziner2005). The backward-moving shear flow in the separation zone behaves similarly to a thin boundary layer as the wall is approached, and thus the flow structure has to approach the two-component limit at the wall. After the separation bubble, the shear layer develops, with more points concentrated on the ‘axisymmetric contraction’ line after the log-law region.

6.4 High Reynolds number $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ case

Figure 16 shows the loci associated with traversals in the vertical direction at eight locations ( $x/C=0.35,0.55,0.7,0.8,0.85,0.90,0.94,0.96$ ) along the suction surface of the A-airfoil. The loci vary significantly at different locations. In the attached zone, $x/C=0.35,0.55,0.7,0.8,0.85$ , the locus of the turbulence state follows a similar approach beyond the wall, i.e. from 2C turbulence to log-law region, and then free shear-layer region. As the location moves closer towards the separation point fewer points concentrate along the ‘axisymmetric contraction’ line. In the recirculation zone, $x/C=0.9,0.94,0.96$ , most of the states are clustered along the ‘axisymmetric expansion’ line although a portion of the locus approaches the ‘axisymmetric contraction’ line. In the present case, the anisotropy in a free shear layer is considerably lower than that in a near-wall layer, and thus the turbulence state never approaches the two-component state at the end.

7.1 Data analysis for three cases

For the NACA0012 airfoil, the monitoring point is located at $x/C=0.96$ inside the separation zone. As shown in figure 17(a), which shows a somewhat regular oscillation, four typical instantaneous snapshots of the near-wall flow field are chosen to analyse the surface skin-friction profiles: two corresponding to a local maximum and minimum, and one each corresponding to the upward and downward flow speed.

For the NACA0018 airfoil, where the flow is still regular but with more than one dominant frequency, the monitoring point is located at $x/C=0.35$ . Four typical instantaneous snapshot of the near-wall flow field are adopted, as shown in figure 17(b), similar to the choice of the NACA0012 airfoil.

For the A-airfoil, the monitoring point is located at $x/C=0.882$ . Only two typical instantaneous snapshot of the near-wall flow field are chosen: one at a local maximum and the other at a local minimum (see figure 17 c), due to strongly random variations of $\tilde{u} (t)/U_{\infty }$ .

For every time instant analysed in the next several plots, we use the spanwise-averaged wall-parallel skin-friction coefficient $C_{f}$ , spanwise-averaged streamlines and skin-friction lines of the instantaneous skin-friction vector $\boldsymbol{C}_{\boldsymbol{f}}$ . These include figure 18 for the case of $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ , figure 19 for the case of $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ and figure 20 for the case of $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ .

In every plot, we show a dashed line to represent every zero-crossing point in the spanwise-averaged $C_{f}$ plot, and label it as $S_{i}$ if the flow is separating or $R_{i}$ if reattaching. It should be emphasized that, due to the prevalence of many local separation/reattachment bubbles, sometimes it is difficult to recognize the separation point and reattachment for a given specific bubble and thus the subscript is not exactly related to a fixed bubble. We label the subscript $i$ only for counting the critical points along the flow direction.

7.2 $Re_{c}=10^{4}$

In § 5.1 where the WMLES results are verified against DNS of the NACA0012 case at $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ , we observe shear layer turbulent transition at approximately $x/C=0.92$ , which is very close to the trailing edge. In figure 18, there is a primary separation point, denoted $S_{1}$ in all the figures at $x/C=0.32$ : this is identified as the first zero crossing of $C_{f}$ and remains virtually unchanged for the entire time sequence. The correspondence between the spanwise-averaged streamlines, $C_{f}$ and surface streamlines, marked by a dashed blue line, is clear. Moreover, in the neighbourhood of the separation line on the airfoil surface, the surface streamlines are straight with no spanwise components, and converge at $x/C=0.32$ . This is indicative of the fact that the flow is virtually two-dimensional with no spanwise variation until the primary separation line $S_{1}$ . This separation point $S_{1}$ marks the beginning of the globally separated flow, and constitutes the ‘primary separation bubble’ (PSB). This bubble reattaches near the trailing edge, at point $R_{2}$ in figure 18(a,b,d), but not in figure 18(c).

Inside the PSB, the flow shows a small secondary separated zone which separates at $S_{2}$ and reattaches at $R_{1}$ . On surface streamline plots, these near-wall separation and reattachment flows degenerate to bundles of diverging/converging streamlines. This secondary separation bubble is also observed in figure 18(a,b,d), while it is not observed in 18(c). It is clear that during the shedding process, part of the vorticity is extracted from the primary separation bubble and the secondary separation bubble. We note that the separation points ( $S_{2}$ ) of the secondary separation bubble, if it exists, remain at around $x/C=0.87$ , $0.94$ , $0.96$ ; points which are close to the observed turbulent transition point through $-\overline{u^{\prime }v^{\prime }}$ . From this viewpoint, it is plausible to conclude the secondary separation bubble is related to shear-layer turbulent transition. Instead of considering the secondary separation bubble as a signature of turbulent transition, we prefer to suggest that the wall-attached bubble is a source of perturbations leading to the shear layer turbulent transition.

Figure 20.

A-airfoil, $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . The separation behaviour on the suction side at different instants. (a)  $t=15.92C/U_{\infty }$ ; (b)  $t=16.91C/U_{\infty }$ . For each panel: top, the instantaneous spanwise-averaged friction coefficient $C_{f}$ ; middle, streamlines of the instantaneous spanwise-averaged flow filed; bottom, the skin-friction trajectories.

7.3 $Re_{c}=10^{5}$

Based on the time- and spanwise-averaged $(C_{p},C_{f})$ as plotted in figure 7 for the NACA0018 airfoil case, the turbulent boundary layer flow forms starting at approximately $x/C=0.45$ . This turbulent boundary layer remains generally attached until the trailing edge. For this case, we mainly discuss the region of the transition part, which corresponding to the region $x/C\in [0.3,0.55]$ on the suction side of the airfoil, as shown in each plot in figure 19. We note the separation point denoted $S_{1}$ , which is close to the leading edge, is not visible in the present plots.

A notable difference of the present case from the case of $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ is the disappearance of the primary separation bubble. For the NACA0018 case at $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ , the flow exhibits strong unsteadiness, and the separated flow somewhat breaks up into several small bubbles. Among the four plots of figure 19, we can see points of $R_{1}$ , $S_{2}$ , $R_{2}$ , $S_{3}$ and $R_{3}$ at all instants, but points $S_{4}$ , $R_{4}$ , $R_{5}$ and $R_{5}$ are seen only at some instants. Hence for this case, the interaction of several separation bubbles contributes to the shear-layer turbulent transition, and the flow, while more complex, may be considered as an extension of the mechanism in the case of $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ for NACA0012.

Another interesting phenomenon for this case at $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ is the spanwise length scale. In figure 19(c), features with a length scale of a fraction of the spanwise domain size are observed in the plot of skin-friction lines. While the flow remains two-dimensional up to point $R_{2}$ at approximately $x/C=0.38$ , the spanwise variation beyond that point grows and a somewhat periodic behaviour in the spanwise direction is observed. At $x/C\approx 0.41$ , structures with a scale of approximately $0.08C$ are noted. These structures keep breaking into small-scale structures in the downward region, until reaching the turbulent region. Here we briefly comment on our somewhat larger spanwise domain extent compared with other airfoil simulations in the literature. From the unsteady and irregular surface flow patterns in the higher Reynolds number case, we point out that airfoil simulations employing small spanwise domain sizes may not be able to faithfully reproduce the unsteady flow patterns observed in our LES.

7.4 $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$

Flow at $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ endures not only shear-layer turbulent transition and corresponding attached turbulent boundary layer flow (shear-layer development and log-law region, see figure 16), but also turbulent separation, which is of interest here. In figure 20, we use data at two instants and plot the spanwise-averaged skin-friction coefficient, spanwise-averaged streamlines and surface streamlines, focusing on the turbulent separation region of $x/C\in [0.8,1.0]$ .

Skin-friction lines at this high Reynolds number show features of a distinct length scale. In both plots, we can observe two distinct flows, with some large-scale structures corresponding to typical turbulent flow, and some small-scale structures which are essentially local separation/reattachment cells and are signatures of local flow reversals. The aggregation of those local reversal flows forms separation lines. It should be emphasized in this high $Re_{c}$ case, we do not discern clear instantaneous separation of the turbulent flow or small-scale reversal flows along the flow direction compared with the previous lower Reynolds number cases.

7.5 Comparisons with other turbulent flows

It is interesting to compare the skin-friction portraits of airfoil flows to other canonical flows. When turbulent separation phenomenon takes place in turbulent boundary layer flow, as described by Chong et al. (Reference Chong, Soria, Perry, Chacin, Cantwell and Na1998), although a clear separation line cannot be observed, a region of small reversal flows is visible around the mean flow separation point. In flow past a circular cylinder, unsteady separation phenomena, especially the secondary separation/reattachment, dominate the mean features of the flow. For high Reynolds number cases, the unsteady secondary separation/reattachment can also be observed from instantaneous skin-friction portraits, revealed by the aggregation of small-scale reversal flows as noted in Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin, Samtaney, Zhang and Gao2017), while the spanwise distribution does not show much difference. This kind of effect is artificially enhanced in the grooved cylinder case of Cheng et al. (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2018a ), by using grooves distributed in the azimuthal direction while retaining the groove shape in the spanwise direction. Another case which also shows ordered small-scale reversal flows is that of a rotating cylinder as discussed in Cheng, Pullin & Samtaney (Reference Cheng, Pullin and Samtaney2018b ). In rotating cylinder, the lift crisis phenomenon, or so-called reverse Magnus effect, is found to be a result of flow reorganization due to the aggregation of small-scale separation/reattachment cells on the under and leeward parts of the cylinder surface. In this way, an ordered dividing line, which clearly shows upstream attached flow, and downstream small-scale reversal flows, is found to show little difference in the spanwise direction. This is quite similar to the turbulent separation in turbulent boundary layer flows.

However, in the present study of flow over airfoils, we note a stronger dependence or flow distortion in the spanwise distribution. In cases with $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ and $10^{5}$ , along the flow evolution, we note the presence of local structures, with a variation in spanwise direction. Such structures show different intensities at different instants, for example, a strong deviation from separation point $S_{3}$ in figure 19 at around $x/C\approx 0.41$ . Strong spanwise distribution is even obvious for the turbulent separation case at $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ . In this case, a clear dividing line that separates the incoming flow and small-scale reversal flows is hardly observed, which is unlike what is seen in a flat-plate turbulent boundary layer and cylinder flows.

In summary, airfoil flow shows quite similar but still exhibit unique behaviour compared to classical flows such as flow over a cylinder and turbulent boundary layer flow. In the case of $Re_{c}=10^{4}$ , a primary separation bubble and a secondary separation bubble are clearly visible and their interaction forms the source of shear-layer turbulent transition, which is similar to the flow over a smooth cylinder. In the case of $Re_{c}=10^{5}$ , the separation region breaks into several unsteady bubbles and their interaction results in strong spanwise variation and further evolution into turbulence. This strong spanwise structure provides a reference length scale for reasonably predicting flows. For the case $Re_{c}=2.1\times 10^{6}$ , besides the similar turbulent transition behaviour, the turbulent separation phenomenon is similar to flat-plate turbulent separation in the sense of small-scale reversal flows, but still possesses its own character due to vortex shedding.