Numerical Study of Turbulent Flow Past a Flat Plate Using a Two-fluid Model

In this paper, we investigate the numerical simulation of turbulent flow over a flat plate from the NASA database using a two-fluid turbulence model. The main novelty lies in integrating this model into COMSOL Multiphysics 6.2 and developing an additional in-house finite element code for independent numerical verification. The two-fluid model, previously not applied to flat-plate boundary-layer problems, was adapted to this configuration, enabling a more accurate description of internal turbulent-layer properties. To assess accuracy, results from COMSOL and the author’s code were compared and validated against experimental data. The study analyzes velocity distributions and drag-coefficient evolution along the plate for various Reynolds numbers, with special focus on high-Re regimes where traditional models lose precision. Both numerical approaches showed good mutual agreement and consistency with experiments. The findings confirm the applicability of the two-fluid model for external aerodynamic problems and demonstrate its potential for engineering tasks such as airfoil aerodynamics, aerospace systems, and heat-transfer analysis requiring detailed turbulence representation.