High-order accurate computations for unsteady aerodynamics

A high-order accurate finite difference scheme is used to perform numerical studies on the benefit of high-order methods. The main advantage of the present technique is the possibility to prove stability for the linearized Euler equations on a multi-block domain, including the boundary conditions. The result is a robust high-order scheme for realistic applications. Convergence studies are presented, verifying design order of accuracy and the superior efficiency of high-order methods for applications dominated by wave propagation. Furthermore, numerical computations of a more complex problem, a vortex–airfoil interaction, show that high-order methods are necessary to capture the significant flow features for transient problems and realistic grid resolutions. This methodology is easy to parallelize due to the multi-block capability. Indeed, we show that the speedup of our numerical method scales almost linearly with the number of processors.