An unsteady multiblock multigrid scheme for lifting forward flight rotor simulation

Numerical simulation of multi‐bladed lifting rotors in forward flight is considered. The flow‐solver presented is multiblock and unsteady, which is essential for forward flight, and also includes multigrid acceleration to reduce run‐times. A structured multiblock grid generator specifically for rotor blades has also been developed and is presented here. Previous work has shown that hovering lifting rotor flows are particularly expensive to simulate, since the capture of the vortical wake below the disc requires a long numerical integration time; more than 20 revolutions for an unsteady simulation, or more than 40000 time‐steps for a single grid steady simulation. It is demonstrated here that only two or three revolutions are required to obtain a converged solution for forward flight, since the wake is swept downstream. This requires less than 1.5 × the run‐time of a steady hovering simulation, for the same grid density around each blade, even though an unsteady simulation is required and the complete disk must be solved rather than one blade as in hover. It is demonstrated that very fine meshes are required to capture the unsteady tip vortex motion, and the effects on blade loading of blade‐vortex interaction and rotor shaft inclination are also considered. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unsteady rotor flow analysis using a diagonally implicit harmonic balance method and an overset mesh topology

The diagonally implicit harmonic balance method is developed in an overset mesh topology and applied to unsteady rotor flows analysis. Its efficiency is by reducing the complexity of a fully implicit harmonic balance method which becomes more flexible in handling the higher harmonics of the flow solutions. Applied to the overset mesh topology, the efficiency of the method becomes greater by reducing the number of solution interpolations required during the entire solution procedure as the method reduces the unsteady computation into periodic steady state. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the method, both hovering and unsteady forward flight of Caradonna and Tung and AH-1G rotors are solved. Compared with wind-tunnel experiments, the numerical results demonstrate good agreements at computational cost an order of magnitude more efficient than the conventional time-accurate computation method. The proposed method has great potential in other engineering applications, including flapping wing vehicles, turbo-machinery, wind-turbines, etc.     

用鲁棒Riemann求解器和运动重叠网格计算旋翼粘性绕流

发展了一种基于鲁棒Riemann求解器和运动重叠网格技术计算直升机悬停旋翼流场的方法。基于惯性坐标系,悬停旋翼流场是非定常流场,控制方程为可压缩Reynolds平均Navier-Stoke方程,其对流项采用Roe近似Reimann求解器离散,使用改进的五阶加权基本无振荡格式进行高阶重构,非定常时间推进采用含牛顿型LUSGS子迭代的全隐式双时间步方法。为实施旋转运动和便于捕捉尾迹,计算采用运动重叠网格技术。计算得到的桨叶表面压力分布及桨尖涡涡核位置都与实验结果吻合较好。数值结果表明:所发展方法对桨尖涡具有较高的分辨率,对激波具有较好的捕捉能力,该方法可进一步推广到前飞旋翼粘性绕流的计算。     

Numerical simulation of flapping‐wing insect hovering flight at unsteady flow

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was conducted to study the unsteady aerodynamics of a virtual flying bumblebee during hovering flight. The integrated geometry of bumblebee was established to define the shape of a three‐dimensional virtual bumblebee model with beating its wings, accurately mimicking the three‐dimensional movements of wings during hovering flight. The kinematics data of wings documented from the measurement to the bumblebee in normal hovering flight aided by the high‐speed video. The Navier–Stokes equations are solved numerically. The solution provides the flow and pressure fields, from which the aerodynamic forces and vorticity wake structure are obtained. Insights into the unsteady aerodynamic force generation process are gained from the force and flow‐structure information. The CFD analysis has established an overall understanding of the viscous and unsteady flow around the virtual flying bumblebee and of the time course of instantaneous force production, which reveals that hovering flight is dominated by the unsteady aerodynamics of both the instantaneous dynamics and also the past history of the wing. A coherent leading‐edge vortex with axial flow and the attached wingtip vortex and trailing edge vortex were detected. The leading edge vortex, wing tip vortex and trailing edge vortex, which caused by the pressure difference between the upper and the lower surface of wings. The axial flow, which include the spanwise flow and chordwise flow, is derived from the spanwise pressure gradient and chordwise pressure gradient, will stabilize the vortex and gives it a characteristic spiral conical shape. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parallel solution of lifting rotors in hover and forward flight

An implicit unsteady, multiblock, multigrid, upwind solver including mesh deformation capability, and structured multiblock grid generator, are presented and applied to lifting rotors in both hover and forward flight. To allow the use of very fine meshes and, hence, better representation of the flow physics, a parallel version of the code has been developed. It is demonstrated that once the grid density is sufficient to capture enough turns of the tip vortices, hover exhibits oscillatory behaviour of the wake, even using a steady formulation. An unsteady simulation is then presented, and detailed analysis of the time‐accurate wake history is performed and compared to theoretical predictions. Forward flight simulations are also presented and, again, grid density effects on the wake formation investigated. Parallel performance of the code using up to 1024 CPU's is also presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order compact finite‐difference lattice Boltzmann method for simulation of steady and unsteady incompressible flows

A high‐order compact finite‐difference lattice Boltzmann method (CFDLBM) is proposed and applied to accurately compute steady and unsteady incompressible flows. Herein, the spatial derivatives in the lattice Boltzmann equation are discretized by using the fourth‐order compact FD scheme, and the temporal term is discretized with the fourth‐order Runge–Kutta scheme to provide an accurate and efficient incompressible flow solver. A high‐order spectral‐type low‐pass compact filter is used to stabilize the numerical solution. An iterative initialization procedure is presented and applied to generate consistent initial conditions for the simulation of unsteady flows. A sensitivity study is also conducted to evaluate the effects of grid size, filtering, and procedure of boundary conditions implementation on accuracy and convergence rate of the solution. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed solution procedure based on the CFDLBM method are also examined by comparison with the classical LBM for different flow conditions. Two test cases considered herein for validating the results of the incompressible steady flows are a two‐dimensional (2‐D) backward‐facing step and a 2‐D cavity at different Reynolds numbers. Results of these steady solutions computed by the CFDLBM are thoroughly compared with those of a compact FD Navier–Stokes flow solver. Three other test cases, namely, a 2‐D Couette flow, the Taylor's vortex problem, and the doubly periodic shear layers, are simulated to investigate the accuracy of the proposed scheme in solving unsteady incompressible flows. Results obtained for these test cases are in good agreement with the analytical solutions and also with the available numerical and experimental results. The study shows that the present solution methodology is robust, efficient, and accurate for solving steady and unsteady incompressible flow problems even at high Reynolds numbers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aeroelastic analysis of helicopter rotor blade in hover using an efficient reduced-order aerodynamic model

This paper presents a coupled flap–lag–torsion aeroelastic stability analysis and response of a hingeless helicopter blade in the hovering flight condition. The boundary element method based on the wake eigenvalues is used for the prediction of unsteady airloads of the rotor blade. The aeroelastic equations of motion of the rotor blade are derived by Galerkin's method. To obtain the aeroelastic stability and response, the governing nonlinear equations of motion are linearized about the nonlinear steady equilibrium positions using small perturbation theory. The equilibrium deflections are calculated through the iterative Newton–Raphson method. Numerical results comprising steady equilibrium state deflections, aeroelastic eigenvalues and time history response about these states for a two-bladed rotor are presented, and some of them are compared with those obtained from a two-dimensional quasi-steady strip aerodynamic theory. Also, the effect of the number of aerodynamic eigenmodes is investigated. The results show that the three-dimensional aerodynamic formulation has considerable impact on the determination of both the equilibrium condition and lead-lag instability.     

Development of an Artificial Compressibility Methodology with Implicit LU-SGS Method

A numerical method has been developed to solve the steady and unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in a two-dimensional, curvilinear coordinate system. The solution procedure is based on the method of artificial compressibility and uses a third-order flux-difference splitting upwind differencing scheme for convective terms and second-order center difference for viscous terms. A time-accurate scheme for unsteady incompressible flows is achieved by using an implicit real time discretization and a dual-time approach, which introduces pseudo-unsteady terms into both the mass conservation equation and momentum equations. An efficient fully implicit algorithm LU-SGS, which was originally derived for the compressible Eulur and Navier-Stokes equations by Jameson and Toon [1], is developed for the pseudo-compressibility formulation of the two dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for both steady and unsteady flows. A variety of computed results are presented to validate the present scheme. Numerical solutions for steady flow in a square lid-driven cavity and over a backward facing step and for unsteady flow in a square driven cavity with an oscillating lid and in a circular tube with a smooth expansion are respectively presented and compared with experimental data or other numerical results.     

Unsteady three‐dimensional boundary layer flow due to a stretching surface in a micropolar fluid

In this paper, the unsteady three‐dimensional boundary layer flow due to a stretching surface in a viscous and incompressible micropolar fluid is considered. The partial differential equations governing the unsteady laminar boundary layer flow are solved numerically using an implicit finite‐difference scheme. The numerical solutions are obtained which are uniformly valid for all dimensionless time from initial unsteady‐state flow to final steady‐state flow in the whole spatial region. The equations for the initial unsteady‐state flow are also solved analytically. It is found that there is a smooth transition from the small‐time solution to the large‐time solution. The features of the flow for different values of the governing parameters are analyzed and discussed. The solutions of interest for the skin friction coefficient with various values of the stretching parameter c and material parameter K are presented. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite volume unstructured multigrid method for efficient computation of unsteady incompressible viscous flows

An unstructured non‐nested multigrid method is presented for efficient simulation of unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes flows. The Navier–Stokes solver is based on the artificial compressibility approach and a higher‐order characteristics‐based finite‐volume scheme on unstructured grids. Unsteady flow is calculated with an implicit dual time stepping scheme. For efficient computation of unsteady viscous flows over complex geometries, an unstructured multigrid method is developed to speed up the convergence rate of the dual time stepping calculation. The multigrid method is used to simulate the steady and unsteady incompressible viscous flows over a circular cylinder for validation and performance evaluation purposes. It is found that the multigrid method with three levels of grids results in a 75% reduction in CPU time for the steady flow calculation and 55% reduction for the unsteady flow calculation, compared with its single grid counterparts. The results obtained are compared with numerical solutions obtained by other researchers as well as experimental measurements wherever available and good agreements are obtained. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A third‐order implicit discontinuous Galerkin method based on a Hermite WENO reconstruction for time‐accurate solution of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations

A space and time third‐order discontinuous Galerkin method based on a Hermite weighted essentially non‐oscillatory reconstruction is presented for the unsteady compressible Euler and Navier–Stokes equations. At each time step, a lower‐upper symmetric Gauss–Seidel preconditioned generalized minimal residual solver is used to solve the systems of linear equations arising from an explicit first stage, single diagonal coefficient, diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta time integration scheme. The performance of the developed method is assessed through a variety of unsteady flow problems. Numerical results indicate that this method is able to deliver the designed third‐order accuracy of convergence in both space and time, while requiring remarkably less storage than the standard third‐order discontinous Galerkin methods, and less computing time than the lower‐order discontinous Galerkin methods to achieve the same level of temporal accuracy for computing unsteady flow problems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF UNSTEADY VISCOUS FLOWS USING AN IMPLICIT PROJECTION METHOD

In this paper an implicit projection method for the solution of the two-dimensional, time-dependent, incompressible Navier– Stokes equations is presented. The basic principle of this method is that the evaluation of the time evolution is split into intermediate steps. The computational method is based on the approximate factorization technique. The coupled approach is used to link the equations of motion and the turbulence model equations. The standard k-ϵ turbulence model is used. The current methodology, which has been tested extensively for steady problems, is now applied for the numerical simulation of unsteady flows. Several cases were tested, such as plane or axisymmetric channels, a backward-facing step, a square cavity and an axisymmetric stenosis.     

Low‐cost implicit schemes for all‐speed flows on unstructured meshes

Matrix‐free implicit treatments are now commonly used for computing compressible flow problems: a reduced cost per iteration and low‐memory requirements are their most attractive features. This paper explains how it is possible to preserve these features for all‐speed flows, in spite of the use of a low‐Mach preconditioning matrix. The proposed approach exploits a particular property of a widely used low‐Mach preconditioner proposed by Turkel. Its efficiency is demonstrated on some steady and unsteady applications. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transonic Rotor/Stator Interaction Using a 3-D Linearised Unsteady Viscous Flow Model

The paper first summarizes the forced response problem in turbomachinery and reviews various numerical methods for the simulation of unsteady flows. A particular technique, based on the linearisation of the unsteady Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes equations on three-dimensional mixed-element grids of tetrahedra, hexahedra and wedges, is described in some detail. The methodology was applied to a NGV/rotor interaction benchmark case for which detailed steady and unsteady flow measurements are available. The steady-state flow, calculated using a non-linear viscous representation, was described in detail with emphasis on features such as separation, horseshoe and passage vortices, tip leakage and shock structure since these are likely to influence the unsteady flow. The sources of unsteadiness on the rotor passage were evaluated from the steady-state solution at the NGV outlet. The disturbances were split into vortical, entropic and potential waves, the Fourier components of which were considered separately. The summation of the vortical and entropic waves was used as a rotor inlet boundary condition in order to assess the wake/rotor unsteady interaction. Similarly, potential waves were used to study the potential/rotor interaction. The results obtained from these two types of unsteady interactions were superimposed and compared with experimental data. Good qualitative and, in most cases, quantitative agreement was obtained, a finding which suggests that the unsteady flowfield generated by the relative blade motion can be considered to be a quasi-linear phenomenon for the particular HP turbine studied. Finally, the mechanisms of wake/rotor and potential/rotor interactions were studied in some detail and it was concluded that the former was strong in the crown of the blade while the latter was dominant in the leading edge region.     

Multigrid convergence of inviscid fixed‐ and rotary‐wing flows

The affect of multigrid acceleration implemented within an upwind‐biased Euler method is presented, and applied to fixed‐wing and rotary‐wing flows. The convergence of fixed‐ and rotary‐wing computations is shown to be vastly different, and multigrid is shown to be less effective for rotary‐wing flows. The flow about a hovering rotor suffers from very slow convergence of the inner blade region, where the flow is effectively incompressible. Furthermore, the vortical wake must develop over several turns before convergence is achieved, whereas for fixed‐wing computations the far‐field grid and solution have little significance. Results are presented for single mesh and two, three, four, and five level multigrid, and using five levels a reduction in required CPU time of over 80 per cent is demonstrated for rotary‐wing computations, but 94 per cent for fixed‐wing computations. It is found that a simple V‐cycle is the most effective, smoothing in the decreasing mesh density direction only, with a relaxed trilinear prolongation operator. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical simulation of minimum B‐jumps at abrupt drops

A numerical simulation of minimum B‐jumps in horizontal rectangular channels having an abrupt drop is given. Gradually varied, steady, supercritical flow is assumed as the initial condition. An unsteady flow is created by increasing the downstream depth. One‐dimensional, unsteady Saint‐Venant equations are solved by using the MacCormack and the dissipative two–four explicit finite difference schemes. The steady flow solution is obtained by treating the time variable as an iteration parameter and letting the solution converge to the steady state. The abrupt drop is treated as an interior boundary and solved by the method of characteristics. The results are compared with experimental and analytical studies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A convergent and universally bounded interpolation scheme for the treatment of advection

A high resolution scheme with improved iterative convergence properties was devised by incorporating total‐variation diminishing constraints, appropriate for unsteady problems, into an implicit time‐marching method used for steady flow problems. The new scheme, referred to as Convergent and Universally Bounded Interpolation Scheme for the Treatment of Advection (CUBISTA), has similar accuracy to the well‐known SMART scheme, both being formally third‐order accurate on uniform meshes for smooth flows. Three demonstration problems are considered: (1) advection of three scalar profiles, a step, a sine‐squared, and a semi‐ellipse; (2) Newtonian flow over a backward‐facing step; and (3) viscoelastic flow through a planar contraction and around a cylinder. For the case of the viscoelastic flows, in which the high resolution schemes are also used to represent the advective terms in the constitutive equation, it is shown that only the new scheme is able to provide a converged solution to the prescribed tolerance. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order discontinuous Galerkin solver for low Mach number flows

In this work, we present a high‐order discontinuous Galerkin method (DGM) for simulating variable density flows at low Mach numbers. The corresponding low Mach number equations are an approximation of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations in the limit of zero Mach number. To the best of the authors'y knowledge, it is the first time that the DGM is applied to the low Mach number equations. The mixed‐order formulation is applied for spatial discretization. For steady cases, we apply the semi‐implicit method for pressure‐linked equation (SIMPLE) algorithm to solve the non‐linear system in a segregated manner. For unsteady cases, the solver is implicit in time using backward differentiation formulae, and the SIMPLE algorithm is applied to solve the non‐linear system in each time step. Numerical results for the following three test cases are shown: Couette flow with a vertical temperature gradient, natural convection in a square cavity, and unsteady natural convection in a tall cavity. Considering a fixed number of degrees of freedom, the results demonstrate the benefits of using higher approximation orders. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order discontinuous Galerkin method for all‐speed flows

In this article, we present a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of steady solutions of the compressible fully coupled Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes and k ? ω turbulence model equations for solving all‐speed flows. The system of equations is iterated to steady state by means of an implicit scheme. The DG solution is extended to the incompressible limit by implementing a low Mach number preconditioning technique. A full preconditioning approach is adopted, which modifies both the unsteady terms of the governing equations and the dissipative term of the numerical flux function by means of a new preconditioner, on the basis of a modified version of Turkel's preconditioning matrix. At sonic speed the preconditioner reduces to the identity matrix thus recovering the non‐preconditioned DG discretization. An artificial viscosity term is added to the DG discretized equations to stabilize the solution in the presence of shocks when piecewise approximations of order of accuracy higher than 1 are used. Moreover, several rescaling techniques are implemented in order to overcome ill‐conditioning problems that, in addition to the low Mach number stiffness, can limit the performance of the flow solver. These approaches, through a proper manipulation of the governing equations, reduce unbalances between residuals as a result of the dependence on the size of elements in the computational mesh and because of the inherent differences between turbulent and mean‐flow variables, influencing both the evolution of the Courant Friedrichs Lewy (CFL) number and the inexact solution of the linear systems. The performance of the method is demonstrated by solving three turbulent aerodynamic test cases: the flat plate, the L1T2 high‐lift configuration and the RAE2822 airfoil (Case 9). The computations are performed at different Mach numbers using various degrees of polynomial approximations to analyze the influence of the proposed numerical strategies on the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of a high‐order DG solver at different flow regimes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of a preconditioned high‐order accurate artificial compressibility‐based incompressible flow solver in wide range of Reynolds numbers

In the present study, the preconditioned incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations with the artificial compressibility method formulated in the generalized curvilinear coordinates are numerically solved by using a high‐order compact finite‐difference scheme for accurately and efficiently computing the incompressible flows in a wide range of Reynolds numbers. A fourth‐order compact finite‐difference scheme is utilized to accurately discretize the spatial derivative terms of the governing equations, and the time integration is carried out based on the dual time‐stepping method. The capability of the proposed solution methodology for the computations of the steady and unsteady incompressible viscous flows from very low to high Reynolds numbers is investigated through the simulation of different 2‐dimensional benchmark problems, and the results obtained are compared with the existing analytical, numerical, and experimental data. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to evaluate the effects of the size of the computational domain and other numerical parameters on the accuracy and performance of the solution algorithm. The present solution procedure is also extended to 3 dimensions and applied for computing the incompressible flow over a sphere. Indications are that the application of the preconditioning in the solution algorithm together with the high‐order discretization method in the generalized curvilinear coordinates provides an accurate and robust solution method for simulating the incompressible flows over practical geometries in a wide range of Reynolds numbers including the creeping flows.