Numerical Simulation of Unsteady Rotor Flow Using an Unstructured Overset Mesh Flow Solver

Abstract

An unstructured overset mesh method has been developed for the simulation of unsteady flow fields around isolated rotors and rotor-fuselage configurations. The flow solver was parallelized for the efficient calculation of complicated flows requiring a large number of cells. A quasi-unsteady mesh adaptation technique was adopted to enhance the spatial accuracy of the solution and to better resolve the rotor wake. The method has been applied to calculate the flow fields around rotor-alone and rotor-fuselage configurations in forward flight. Validations were made by comparing the predicted results with those of measurements. It was demonstrated that the present method is efficient and robust for the prediction of unsteady time-accurate flow fields involving multiple bodies in relative motion.