INVESTIGATION OF REYNOLDS STRESSES PRIOR TO VORTEX BREAKDOWN ON A TRIPLE-DELTA WING AT TRANSONIC CONDITION

The behavior of leading-edge vortices on a triple-delta wing configuration has been analysed numerically at a side slip condition. The flow is transonic, therefore several shock waves appear over the fuselage with multiple vortex-shock interactions occurring. The paper focuses on the investigation of the Reynolds stress tensor with a detailed analysis of individual components and their relevance for the prediction of the flow features. Three different approaches of turbulence treatment and of constitutive relation have been compared in order to understand the correlation between Reynolds stress field further upstream and the consecutive appearance of vortex breakdown on the windward wing. The Quadratic Constitutive Relation appears in the end a promising approach in order to mitigate the deficiencies of the linear Boussinesq assumption and to predict the flow physics over such configuration with a better accuracy.