Predicting the onset of airfoil stall in transitional and turbulent flows with a pressure-gradient-based separation model for RANS simulations
Abstract
We propose an improved version of the k-ω shear-stress transport Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model that supersedes our prior work (Griffin et al. 2024 J. Turb.) with an updated pressure-gradient sensor that generalizes well across geometries and to laminar, transitional, and turbulent flows alike. The model is based on a composite pressure gradient criterion that uses the solution of an intermittency transport equation to synthesize the separation criteria of the Falkner-Skan theory for laminar flows and the continuously critical theory for turbulent flows. The proposed model is applied to various airfoils including the thick airfoils representative of wind turbine applications (DU00-w-212, S809 and S814) and thinner airfoils used in aerospace applications [NACA23012 and NLF(1)-0416]. For all airfoils, the proposed model is found to preserve or improve the predictions of the baseline model for both fully turbulent and transitional airfoils as demonstrated with results for the lift and drag coefficients. The model is also found to improve the prediction of separation on the NREL Phase VI rotor in a preliminary study, suggesting that the model will generalize to other complex three-dimensional flows.
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BibTeX
@misc{griffin2026predicting,
title = {{Predicting the onset of airfoil stall in transitional and turbulent flows with a pressure-gradient-based separation model for RANS simulations}},
author = {Kevin Patrick Griffin and Bumseok Lee and Ganesh Vijayakumar and Benjamin Savino and Brett J. Bornhoft and Omkar B. Shende and Michael P. Whitmore},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.33268},
eprint = {2610.33268},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33268},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Predicting the onset of airfoil stall in transitional and turbulent flows with a pressure-gradient-based separation model for RANS simulations
AU - Kevin Patrick Griffin
AU - Bumseok Lee
AU - Ganesh Vijayakumar
AU - Benjamin Savino
AU - Brett J. Bornhoft
AU - Omkar B. Shende
AU - Michael P. Whitmore
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.33268
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33268
AB - We propose an improved version of the k-ω shear-stress transport Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model that supersedes our prior work (Griffin et al. 2024 J. Turb.) with an updated pressure-gradient sensor that generalizes well across geometries and to laminar, transitional, and turbulent flows alike. The model is based on a composite pressure gradient criterion that uses the solution of an intermittency transport equation to synthesize the separation criteria of the Falkner-Skan theory for laminar flows and the continuously critical theory for turbulent flows. The proposed model is applied to various airfoils including the thick airfoils representative of wind turbine applications (DU00-w-212, S809 and S814) and thinner airfoils used in aerospace applications [NACA23012 and NLF(1)-0416]. For all airfoils, the proposed model is found to preserve or improve the predictions of the baseline model for both fully turbulent and transitional airfoils as demonstrated with results for the lift and drag coefficients. The model is also found to improve the prediction of separation on the NREL Phase VI rotor in a preliminary study, suggesting that the model will generalize to other complex three-dimensional flows.
ER -