INFLUENCE OF THE CURVATURE OF AN AIRFOIL ON THE STRUCTURE OF TRANSONIC FLOW
A. V. Ivanova UDC 533.6.011 A study is made of the dependence of the pattern of transonic flow about an airfoil on the change in its shape and in the parameters of the incoming air flow. Consideration is given to a family of airfoils in a channel modeling the working section of a wind tunnel. The formation and propagation of weak shock waves in local supersonic regions near the central part of the airfoil has been investigated numerically. The finite-difference method based on a substantially nonoscillatory scheme of second order of accuracy has been employed to solve the Euler equations describing nonviscous gas flow. It has been shown that the sensitivity of the flow pattern to a change in the Mach number of the free flow substantially increases with decrease in the curvature of the airfoil. A. V. Luikov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, Belarus; email: ivanova-a@aport.ru. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 75, No. 6, pp. 104-108, November-December, 2002. Original article submitted April 19, 2002. JEPTER74920200217 JEPTER7492017