Separated flows about single and multi-element airfoils are featured in many scenarios of practical interest, including: stall of fixed wing aircraft, dynamic stall of rotorcraft blades, and stall of compressor and turbine elements within jet engines. In each case, static and/or dynamic stall can lead to losses in performance. More importantly, modeling and analysis tools for stalled flows are relatively poorly evolved and designs must completely avoid stall due to a lack of understanding. The underlying argument is that advancements are necessary to facilitate understanding of and applications involving static and dynamic stall. The state-of-the-art in modeling stall involves numerical solutions to the governing equations of fluids. These tools often either lack fidelity or are prohibitively expensive. Ever-increasing computational power will likely lead to increased application of numerical solutions. The focus of this thesis is improvements in numerical modeling of stall, the need of which arises from poorly evolved analysis tools and the spread of numerical approaches. Technical barriers have included ensuring unsteady flow field and vorticity reproduction, transition modeling, non-linear effects such as viscosity, and convergence of predictions. Contributions to static and dynamic stall analysis have been been made. A hybrid Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes/Large-Eddy-Simulation turbulence technique was demonstrated to predict the unsteadiness and acoustics within a cavity with accuracy approaching Large-Eddy-Simulation. Practices to model separated flows were developed and applied to stalled airfoils. Convergence was characterized to allow computational resources to be focused only as needed. Techniques were established for estimation of integrated coefficients, onset of stall, and reattachment from unconverged data. Separation and stall onset were governed by turbulent transport, while the location of reattachment depended on the mean flow. Application of these methodologies to oscillating flapped airfoils revealed flow through the gap was dominated by the flap angle for low angles of attack. Lag between the aerodynamic response and input flap scheduling was associated with increased oscillation frequency and airfoil/flap gap size. Massively separated flow structures were also examined.

Le but de cette thèse est d’étudier certaines équations aux dérivées partielles hyperboliques-dispersives. Une part importante est consacrée à l’analyse numérique et plus particulièrement à la convergence de schémas aux différences finies pour l’équation de Korteweg-de Vries et les systèmes abcd de Boussinesq. L’étude numérique suit les étapes classiques de consistance et de stabilité. Nous transposons au niveau discret la propriété de stabilité fort-faible des lois de conservations hyperboliques. Nous déterminons l’ordre de convergence des schémas et le quantifions en fonction de la régularité de Sobolev de la donnée initiale. Si nécessaire, nous régularisons la donnée initiale afin de toujours assurer les estimations de consistance. Une étape d’optimisation est alors nécessaire entre cette régularisation et l’ordre de convergence du schéma. Une seconde partie est consacrée à l’existence d’ondes progressives pour l’équation de Korteweg de Vries-Kuramoto-Sivashinsky. Par des méthodes classiques de systèmes dynamiques : système augmenté, fonction de Lyapunov, intégrale de Melnikov, par exemple, nous démontrons l’existence d’ondes oscillantes de petite amplitude. / The aim of this thesis is to study some hyperbolic-dispersive partial differential equations. A significant part is devoted to the numerical analysis and more precisely to the convergence of some finite difference schemes for the Korteweg-de Vries equation and abcd systems of Boussinesq. The numerical study follows the classical steps of consistency and stability. The main idea is to transpose at the discrete level the weak-strong stability property for hyperbolic conservation laws. We determine the convergence rate and we quantify it according to the Sobolev regularity of the initial datum. If necessary, we regularize the initial datum for the consistency estimates to be always valid. An optimization step is thus necessary between this regularization and the convergence rate of the scheme. A second part is devoted to the existence of traveling waves for the Korteweg-de Vries-Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. By classical methods of dynamical systems : extended systems, Lyapunov function, Melnikov integral, for instance, we prove the existence of oscillating small amplitude traveling waves.