Rotor wake capture improvement based on high-order spatially accurate schemes and chimera grids

A high-order upwind scheme has been developed to capture the vortex wake of a helicopter rotor in the hover based on chimera grids. In this paper, an improved fifth-order weighted essentially non-oscillatory （WENO） scheme is adopted to interpolate the higher-order left and right states across a cell interface with the Roe Riemann solver updating inviscid flux, and is compared with the monotone upwind scheme for scalar conservation laws （MUSCL）. For profitably capturing the wake and enforcing the period boundary condition, the computation regions of flows are discretized by using the struc- tured chimera grids composed of a fine rotor grid and a cylindrical background grid. In the background grid, the mesh cells located in the wake regions are refined after the so- lution reaches the approximate convergence. Considering the interpolation characteristic of the WENO scheme, three layers of the hole boundary and the interpolation boundary are searched. The performance of the schemes is investigated in a transonic flow and a subsonic flow around the hovering rotor. The results reveal that the present approach has great capabilities in capturing the vortex wake with high resolution, and the WENO scheme has much lower numerical dissipation in comparison with the MUSCL scheme.

An intelligent control method based on artificial neural network for numerical flight simulation of the basic finner projectile with pitching maneuver

In this paper,an intelligent control method applying on numerical virtual flight is proposed.The proposed algorithm is verified and evaluated by combining with the case of the basic finner projectile model and shows a good application prospect.Firstly,a numerical virtual flight simulation model based on overlapping dynamic mesh technology is constructed.In order to verify the accuracy of the dynamic grid technology and the calculation of unsteady flow,a numerical simulation of the basic finner projectile without control is carried out.The simulation results are in good agreement with the experiment data which shows that the algorithm used in this paper can also be used in the design and evaluation of the intelligent controller in the numerical virtual flight simulation.Secondly,combined with the real-time control requirements of aerodynamic,attitude and displacement parameters of the projectile during the flight process,the numerical simulations of the basic finner projectile’s pitch channel are carried out under the traditional PID(Proportional-Integral-Derivative)control strategy and the intelligent PID control strategy respectively.The intelligent PID controller based on BP(Back Propagation)neural network can realize online learning and self-optimization of control parameters according to the acquired real-time flight parameters.Compared with the traditional PID controller,the concerned control variable overshoot,rise time,transition time and steady state error and other performance indicators have been greatly improved,and the higher the learning efficiency or the inertia coefficient,the faster the system,the larger the overshoot,and the smaller the stability error.The intelligent control method applying on numerical virtual flight is capable of solving the complicated unsteady motion and flow with the intelligent PID control strategy and has a strong promotion to engineering application.

Joint Grid System Used in Embedding Technique

The joint grid system, which consists of the developed collar grid, the virtual grid and other grids, was used in the embedding technique to solve the problem of finding interpolating cells of the internal and external boundary points near the joint regions. With different boundary plane generated along different fixed surface, the collar grid obtained using hyperbolic partial equations can ensure to generate high quality grids and to provide real interpolating cells for the boundary points in the blanking regions. The virtual grid was used to convert solid wall boundary conditions into an interface condition, however, no fluid flow computations were conducted within the virtual grid. The computational result of body strake wing shows that the current developed embedding technique with joint grid system can effectively treat the geometry and can more accurately predict the flow over complexconfiguration with intersecting surfaces.

Numerical Simulation of Rotor-aerodynamic Surface Interaction in Hover Using Moving Chimera Grid

Three-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes equations are numerically solved to simulate the aerodynamic interaction of rotor, canard and horizontal tail in hover based on moving chimera grid. The variations of unsteady aerodynamic forces and moments of the canard and horizontal tail with respect to the rotor azimuth are analyzed with the deflection angle set at 0° and 50°, respectively. The pressure map of aerodynamic surfaces and velocity vector distribution of flow field are investigated to get better understanding of the unsteady aerodynamic interaction. The result shows that the canard and horizontal tail present different characteristics under the downwash of the rotor. The canard produces much vertical force loss with low amplitude fluctuation. Contrarily, the horizontal tail, which is within the flow field induced by the down wash of the rotor, produces only less vertical force loss, but the amplitudes of the lift and pitching moment are larger, implying that a potential deflection angle scheme in hover is 50° for the canard and 0° for the horizontal tail.

Numerical simulation of flow and heat transfer in a random packed bed

Random packed beds have more complex interior structure than structured beds and are widely used in industry and engineering. CFD simulation was carried out to investigate and analyze the local flow and heat transfer in a 120-sphere random packed bed. 3D Navier-Stokes equation was solved with a finite volume formulation based on the Chimera meshing technique. Investigation was focused on low Reynolds number flow （Re=4.6-56.2）, which typically occurs in packed bed reactors in bio-chemical fields. Detailed temperature field information was obtained. Inhomogeneity of flow and heat transfer due to the non-uniform distribution of void fraction was discussed and analyzed.

Numerical Simulation of the Tip Aerodynamics and Acoustics Test

The application of an efficient flow control system on helicopter rotor blades may lead to improved aerodynamic performance. Recently, our invention of Rod Vortex Generators(RVGs) has been analyzed for helicopter rotor blades in hover with success. As a step forward, the study has been extended to forward flight conditions. For this reason, a validation of the numerical modelling for a reference helicopter rotor(without flow control) is needed. The article presents a study of the flow-field of the AH-1G helicopter rotor in low-, medium- and high-speed forward flight. The CFD code FLOWer from DLR has proven to be a suitable tool for the aerodynamic analysis of the two-bladed rotor without any artificial wake modelling. It solves the URANS equations with LEA(Linear Explicit Algebraic stress) k-ω model using the chimera overlapping grids technique. Validation of the numerical model uses comparison with the detailed flight test data gathered by Cross J. L. and Watts M. E. during the Tip Aerodynamics and Acoustics Test(TAAT) conducted at NASA in 1981. Satisfactory agreements for all speed regimes and a presence of significant flow separation in high-speed forward flight suggest a possible benefit from the future implementation of RVGs. The numerical results based on the URANS approach are presented not only for a popular, low-speed case commonly used in rotorcraft community for CFD codes validation but preferably for medium- and high-speed test conditions that have not been published to date.