Enhancement of a Correlation-Based Transition Turbulence Model for Simulating Crossflow Instability

A new laminar–turbulence transition model for capturing three-dimensional boundary layers involving crossflow-induced transition has been developed by extending the existing transition model. In the present transition model, to resolve transition due to crossflow instability, the C1-criterion was evaluated locally using the Falkner–Skan–Cooke velocity profiles. Thus, only local flow quantities are used in determining the onset of three-dimensional transition. As a result, the extended transition model is compatible and works well with modern computational fluid dyanmics flow solvers, particularly for those based on unstructured meshes, under massive parallel environment. The new transition model was implemented in a three-dimensional incompressible unstructured mesh flow solver. Validations of the new transition model were made for an infinite swept-wing configuration and an inclined prolate spheroid by comparing the results with those of the baseline model and experiment. It was found that the new transition model works well by capturing the crossflow-induced transition inside three-dimensional boundary layers more accurately than the baseline model.