Wall Interference Assessment of Two-Dimensional Wind Tunnel Test Using Panel Method

Though wind tunnel test technology has been developed for many years, wall interference is still a tough problem that puzzles researchers. The application of CFD technology to simulate the flow in wind tunnels requires a lot of computing resources. Therefore, people usually estimate wall interference based on the potential flow theory in practice, and the panel method is one of them. In this paper, the basic theory of the panel method is first introduced. Then, wall interference is simulated by arranging linear vortices on the surface of airfoil and wall. Calculation results indicate that the pressure coefficient distribution of this method in a solid wind tunnel agrees well with that of the classical imaging method. As for porous wall interference calculation, this paper adopts a method that adjusting the value of the ventilated wall parameter R until the calculation results are consistent with the test results to obtain an approximate value of the porous wall parameter.