Intrinsically Efficient and Accurate Viscous Simulations via Hyperbolic Navier-Stokes Systems

Abstract

Unstructured-grid methods are essential for computations with complex geometries such as rotorcraft simulations, but its potential has been limited by a higher cost than structured-grid methods as well as inaccuracy in gradient predictions (e.g., diffused or oscillatory vorticity predictions). Grid irregularities are hard to avoid particularly once grid adaptation is performed, which is a critical technique especially for high-order unstructured-grids methods to be practical. Current state-of-the-art Navier-Stokes (NS) codes are known to produce highly erratic viscous stress and heating distributions. Resolution of these problems is very important for justifying the use of high-fidelity models in aerodynamic design and optimization. In this project, we address these issues by developing a Navier-Stokes solver based on a novel first order hyperbolic system method. The new solver is expected to yield O(1/h) acceleration in convergence over existing solvers, where h is the typical grid spacing, as well as achieve high-accuracy in auxiliary quantities, viscous stresses, heating rates, and vorticity, on unstructured grids. These improvements will be achieved by the new method in which the Navier-Stokes equations are discretized as a first-order hyperbolic system including the auxiliary quantities as additional variables. The new code will enable complex large-scale simulations with the current hardware and meet the challenge of highly efficient and accurate multi-scale unsteady aerodynamic computations of Army's interest: vortex-dominated flows, separated flows, wake interaction, and dynamic stall of rotor-craft, helicopter blades, high-speed missiles, gun-launched projectiles, micro air vehicles, and micro adaptive flow control, which require especially accurate vorticity predictions. The new solver is implemented in the framework of a practical flow solver used by Army, NASA's fully unstructured and parallel 3D RANS code, FUN3D.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 24, 2016
Accession Number
AD1058159

Entities

People

  • Hiroaki Nishikawa

Organizations

  • National Institute of Aerospace

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computations
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Euler Equations
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Geometry
  • Mechanics
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Reynolds Number
  • Simulations
  • Students
  • Three Dimensional
  • Viscous Flow

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Space