Transonic flutter computations for the NLR 7301 supercritical airfoil

A numerical investigation of the transonic steady-state aerodynamics and of the two-degree-of-freedom bending/torsion flutter characteristics of the NLR 7301 section is carried out using a time-domain method. An unsteady, two-dimensional, compressible, thin-layer Navier–Stokes flow-solver is coupled with a two-degree-of-freedom structural model. Fully turbulent flows are computed with algebraic or one-equation turbulence models. Furthermore, natural transition is modeled with a transition model. Computations of the steady transonic aerodynamic characteristics show good agreement with Schewe's experiment after a simplified accounting for wind-tunnel interference effects is used. The aeroelastic computations predict limit-cycle flutter in agreement with the experiment. The computed flutter frequency agrees closely with the experiment but the computed flutter amplitudes are an order of magnitude larger than the measured ones. This discrepancy is likely due to the omission of the full wind-tunnel interference effects in the computations.