Why use a panel method?
 

Panel methods can calculate the gas or liquid flow around complex 3D configurations, such as aircraft, with relative ease. However, that ease comes at a price: panel methods are incapable of modeling the viscous effects that are evident in all real-world flows. So why would an engineer use a panel method? Find out why.

Re: Why use a panel method?
 

The main benefit of a panel method is, as you said, in dealing with flows around 3D objects. In some cases the viscous effects are not significant and in these cases panel methods are ideal.

I'm not too sure about the details but there are ways to introduce additional physical effects into a panel method model. I imagine that viscous effects could be included for the case of fully attatched boundary layers by determining the boundary layer thickness across the 3d object and then viewing this boundary layer thickness as a change in the objects geometry. The panels would have to be re-oriented to account for this geometry change which would give a slightly different flow around the object (and thus a different boundary layer thickness distribution). I guess an iterative method would be required.

There is also a way to inlude transonic effects to the doublet lattice method, I guess that this could be adapted for other panel methods.

Re: Why use a panel method?