Patent ID: 7251592

Claim:
A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method for analyzing fluid dynamic performance of a body comprising: determining a freestream turbulence intensity; determining a momentum thickness; determining a turbulence length scale; based on said freestream turbulence intensity, said momentum thickness, and said turbulence length scale, determining a first momentum thickness Reynolds number associated with a first estimated laminar/turbulent transition location along the body; determining an estimated laminar separation location; determining a spatial domain for running a turbulent flow model for modeling the fluid dynamic performance of the body, the determining of the spatial domain comprising: if said estimated laminar separation location is downstream of said first estimated laminar/turbulent transition location, using said first estimated laminar/turbulent transition location to determine the spatial domain; and if said estimated laminar separation location is upstream of said first estimated laminar/turbulent transition location, using a second estimated laminar/turbulent transition location to determine the spatial domain, the second estimated laminar/turbulent transition location being determined as a function of a momentum thickness Reynolds number associated with said estimated laminar separation location, wherein the determining the second estimated laminar/turbulent transition location comprises determining a distance of said second estimated laminar/turbulent transition location from said estimated laminar separation location as a constant multiplied by a streamwise position of said estimated laminar separation location and multiplied by an exponent of a momentum thickness based Reynolds number associated with the estimated laminar separation location; and running the turbulent flow model in the determined spatial domain to determine the fluid dynamic performance of the body, wherein: at least in one instance, said estimated laminar separation location is upstream of said first estimated laminar/turbulent transition location.