Inviscid Computation of Effect of Wake Vortices on a Scale-Model Airplane

The forces and moments sustained by a scale-model airplane in the wake of another aircraft have been calculated using two different solvers. One solver uses a fourth-order central scheme with a specially adapted grid, whereas the other uses a chimera technique with second-order discretization. Additionally, simplified models were used on grids that are too coarse to represent vortices properly. These models work by handling the effect of the vortices by modifying the flux at the solid wall, or the fluxes in the domain. The experimental flowfield that contains wake vortices is modeled by a least-square fit analytical expression. This description is used as the inlet boundary condition for the Euler solvers. Numerical results are in agreement with experiment and with previously published computations using panel methods.