Comparison of wind tunnel and freestream conditions on the numerical predictions of the flow in a two elements wingsail

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of a 1/20-scale model of wingsail in a wind tunnel environment. This study deals with the methodology to achieve accurate comparisons between numerical and experimental data. A particular care is brought in the numerical simulation to reproduce the wind tunnel effects on the model. The experimental results did not match with preliminary numerical simulations performed in a freestream domain. The reason is that the wind tunnel domain introduces some modifications in the flow field, around the wingsail, especially near the tip. As a consequence, a study has been done first to set the correct configuration to model the real vein conditions. Then numerical simulations based on a RANS approach have been run to study the flow around the wing in the wind tunnel environment, at different operating conditions in terms of inlet flow angles and wingsail cambers. A comparison of the numerical predictions with experimental data established the accuracy of the selected approach. The numerical results were then used to complete the investigations done during the experimental campaign.