Adaptive Navier Stokes Calculations For Vortical Flows

Brief summaries are given of research performed in the following areas: (1) Adaptive Euler equation solvers; (2) Adaptation parameters for vortical flow; (3) Vortex breakdown calculations; (4) Calculations for F117A; (5) Normal force hysteresis; (6) Visualization of vortical flows on unstructured grids; and (7) Modeling of vortex breakdown. The reference list gives reports with detailed results.

A new adaptive mesh refinement strategy that is based on a coupled feature-detection and error-estimation approach is developed. The overall goal is to apply the proper degree of refinement to key vortical features in aircraft and rotorcraft wakes. The refinement paradigm is based on a two-stage process wherein the vortical regions are initially identified for refinement using feature-detection, and then the appropriate resolution is determined by the local solution error. The feature-detection scheme uses a local normalization procedure that allows it to automatically identify regions for refinement with threshold values that are not dependent upon the convective scales of the problem. An error estimator, based on the Richardson Extrapolation method, then supplies the identified features with appropriate levels of refinement. The estimator is shown to be well-behaved for steady-state and time-accurate aerodynamic flows. The above strategy is implemented within the Helios code, which features a dual-mesh paradigm of unstructured grids in the near-body domain, and adaptive Cartesian grids in the off-body domain. A main objective of this work is to control the adaption process so that high fidelity wake resolution is obtained in the off-body domain. The approach is tested on several theoretical and practical vortex-dominated flow-fields in an attempt to resolve wingtip vortices and rotor wakes. Accuracy improvements to rotorcraft performance metrics and increased wake resolution are simultaneously documented.

Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.

A new node based upwind scheme for the solution of the 3D Navier- Stokes equations on adaptively refined meshes is presented. The method uses a second-order upwind TVD scheme to integrate the convective terms, and discretizes the viscous terms with a new compact central difference technique. Grid adaptation is achieved through directional division of hexahedral cells in response to evolving features as the solution converges. The method is advanced in time with a multistage Runge-Kutta time stepping scheme. Two- and three- dimensional examples establish the accuracy of the inviscid and viscous discretization. These investigations highlight the ability of the method to produce crisp shocks, while accurately and economically resolving viscous layers. The representation of these and other structures is shown to be comparable to that obtained by structured methods. Further 3D examples demonstrate the ability of the adaptive algorithm to effectively locate and resolve multiple scale features in complex 3D flows with many interacting, viscous, and inviscid structures.