lifting line vs triangle potential flow

marcoB asked 4 years ago

In the case of a wing with no sweep, low dihedral and no fuselage nor tail.
Then in XFLR5 it is recommended to use the lifting line solution.
Is the Flow5 triangular mesh calculation better for the above case?

1 Answers
André Deperroistechwinder Staff answered 4 years ago

The non-linear LLT was kept in xflr5 because it provided a more precise estimation of viscous behaviour than panel methods + interpolation.
However in flow5 the non-linear LLT and the panel method+viscous loop give more or less the same results in such a case. There is therefore no reason to continue using the LLT.
Note that the jibe2 correlation seems to indicate that viscous behaviour is not a big factor since it does not show up in the test results: https://flow5.tech/docs/flow5_doc/Jibe2.html
It is better to work with tri-uniform panels for all cases to be homogeneous and have comparable results.