Unstructured discretisation of a non-local transition model for turbomachinery flows

The description of transitional flows by means of RANS equations is sometimes based on non-local approaches which require the computation of some boundary layer properties. In this work a non-local Laminar Kinetic Energy model is used to predict transitional and separated flows. Usually the non-local term of this model is evaluated along the grid lines of a structured mesh. An alternative approach, which does not rely on grid lines, is introduced in the present work. This new approach allows the use of fully unstructured meshes. Furthermore, it reduces the grid-dependence of the predicted results. The approach is employed to study the transitional flows in the T106c turbine cascade and around a NACA0021 airfoil by means of a discontinuous Galerkin method. The local nature of the discontinuous Galerkin reconstruction is exploited to implement an adaptive algorithm which automatically refines the mesh in the most significant regions.