A numeric far field model for support interference studies in a slotted wall wind tunnel (European Transonic Windtunnel)

This article presents a simplified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the European Transonic Windtunnel test section that represents the model support in a far field and is specifically designed for the investigation of model support effects in the transonic regime. Two parametric studies were carried out in order to determine geometric parameters of the adapted support geometry and in order to enable the simulation of actual wind tunnel experiments, by correlating the wind tunnel reference Mach number with that at the far field in the CFD computation and the effective Mach number at the model location. A comparison was done using measured calibration data from the wind tunnel.