Simulation of airflow past a 2D NACA0015 airfoil using an isogeometric incompressible Navier-Stokes solver with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model

The work presented in this paper concerns the efforts of conducting a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of air flow past a fixed 2D NACA0015 airfoil at high Reynolds number (Re=2.5×106) using an isogeometric finite element methodology with linear, quadratic and cubic spline elements. Flow simulations at such high Reynolds numbers require turbulence models or very high resolution. The present work employs the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model combined with a Navier-Stokes solver based on a Chorin projection method, the first development of its kind in an isogeometric finite element framework. The obtained results from the simulations are compared with two sets of experimental results available in the literature.