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.

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