Inviscid solver : separation of the flow
 

Dear all

I would need a piece of advice about how Fluent deals with the inviscid solver. Indeed,I am working on a 3D body and the lift coefficient I got for different angles of attack gives a stall point. Besides, concerning the flow visualisation, I got some kind of separation of the flow. Should this solver not understand flow separation (since no boundary layer)...? Why does this solver model the stalling point? Could you answer me, should you have any ideas about it??

Thanks all

Jean-Marie

Re: Inviscid solver : separation of the flow
 

What you are seeing is separation caused by the artificial disspiation/viscosity in Fluent's Euler scheme. The separation point (assuming that it is on a curved surface and not at a corner) does not represent anything physical, it is a numerical effect. An "ideal" Euler solver should not predict any separation at all from a wing at high angle of attack (past the stall line).

Separation in Euler solvers has been discussed in detail several time before here. Here are a few archived discussions that might be of interest:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forum/main...cgi?read=19839

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forum/main...cgi?read=17121

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forum/main...cgi?read=23627