Navier-Stokes simulation of unsteady rotor-airframe interaction with momentum source method

Abstract

To numerically simulate aerodynamics of rotor-airframe interaction in a rigorous manner, we need to solve the Navier-Stokes system for a rotor-airframe combination as a whole. This often imposes a serious computational burden since rotating blades and a stationary body have to be simultaneously dealt with. An efficient alternative is to adopt a momentum source method in which the action of rotor is approximated as momentum source over a rotor disc plane in a stationary computational domain. This makes the simulation much simpler. For unsteady simulation, the instantaneous momentum sources are assigned only to a portion of disk plane corresponding to blade passage. The momentum source is obtained by using blade element theory with dynamic inflow model. Computations are carried out for the simple rotor-airframe model (the Georgia Tech model) and the results of the simulation are compared with those of the full Navier-Stokes simulation with moving mesh system for rotor and with experimental data. It is shown that the present simulation yields results as good as those of the full Navier-Stokes simulation.