Paper Title
Mesh Resolution Effects on 2D RANS-Based Turbulence Prediction for the NACA 4412 Airfoil at High Reynolds Number

Abstract
The study presents a systematic investigation of mesh resolution effects on the accuracy of steady, incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations for a two-dimensional NACA 4412 airfoil operating at a chord-based Reynolds-number of Re=3×〖10〗^6. The analysis focuses on two distinct aerodynamic regimes: attached flow at 0° angle of attack (AOA) and separated flow at 20° AOA. Simulations were performed using SST k-ω turbulence model implemented within the EDISON_CFD solver. Structured multi-block meshes with four levels of spatial resolution (M1–M4) were generated using eMEGA v4.0, and flow-field post-processing was conducting using eDAVA v4.0. The study isolates mesh resolution as the principal variable, keeping all solver settings, boundary conditions, and turbulence modeling consistent. Results demonstrate that increasing mesh density leads to improved convergence behavior, more accurate turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) distribution, and better resolution of wake and boundary layer features. The highest-resolution mesh (M4) yielded grid-independent results for both AOA conditions, underscoring the importance of refined near-wall and wake-region discretization. The findings provide quantitative benchmarks for mesh sensitivity in RANS simulations of aerodynamic flows and highlight practical guidelines for achieving grid convergence and physical accuracy in simulations involving the NACA 4412 airfoil and similar configurations. Keywords - NACA4412; Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS); SST k-ω; mesh sensitivity; structured grid; turbulent kinetic energy; boundary layer resolution; CFD validation.