Unsteady residual distribution schemes for transition prediction

In this work, the unsteady simulation of the Navier–Stokes equations is carried out by using a Residual Distribution Schemes (RDS) methodology. This algorithm has a compact stencil (cell-based computations) and uses a finite element like method to compute the residual over the cell. The RDS method has been successfully proven in steady Navier–Stokes computation but its application to fully unsteady configurations is still not closed, because some of the properties of the steady counterpart can be lost. Here, we proposed a numerical solution for unsteady problems that is fully compatible with the original approach. In order to check the method, we chose a very demanding test case, namely the numerical simulation of a Tollmien–Schlichting (TS) wave in a 2D boundary layer. The evolution of this numerical perturbation is accurately computed and checked against theoretical results.