von Karman Institute Lecture Series and Events

4th Symposium on Integrating CFD and Experiments in Aerodynamics - VKI

Monday 14 September 2009 - Wednesday 16 September 2009

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., phone: +32 2 359 96 04, fax: +32 2 359 96 00

CFD practitioners and experimentalists have a common goal of understanding aerodynamics. It is therefore surprising that often the disciplines have only a very limited interaction, which usually involves the validation of CFD. This practice supports integration at the most basic level but often there is no interaction whatsoever between the experimentalist and the CFD practitioners. This situation is unsatisfactory from many points of view including:

the need to have an appreciation of the flow before deciding what should be measured;
the desirability to check experimental measurements as they are taken;
the difficulty in making certain important measurements;
the need to assess the influence of the experimental techniques on the measurements;
the ability of CFD to provide detailed flow information and sensitivity at a reasonable cost for some cases;
the large cost of CFD calculations for other cases;
the lack of credibility for the CFD results for some flow categories.