High Order Direct Numerical Simulation of a 30P30N Three-Element High Lift Airfoil

The purpose of a multi-element airfoil is to significantly increase lift while controlling the stall limit. Though the airflow around a multi-element airfoil at high Reynolds number (O (10)) is well understood from experimental and Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and hybrid turbulence model numerical investigations, this is not the case for low Reynolds number flows (O (10)). In this paper, we numerically investigate this airflow over a threeelement high lift 30P30N airfoil to study the complex physics in the slat cove region. The targeted Reynolds numbers based on the stowed chord length are 5000 and 8320. The twodimensional Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is carried out using an open source solver NEK5000 [1] that is based on a high order spectral element method for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. For validation of results, comparison with experimental particle image velocimetry results of Wang et al [2],[3] will be performed.