Numerical simulation of HVAB rotor in hover using a mixed-mesh flow solver

Abstract

Numerical simulations of the HVAB were carried out by using a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics flow solver. For the computation, mixed meshes of unstructured/Cartesian grids were used. An improved laminar-turbulent crossflow transition model gamma-Re-theta t-CF+ was used to predict laminar-turbulent transition phenomena. In addition, to achieve high resolute flow solutions, an improved scheme ESWENO-P was employed when calculating inviscid fluxes. To find the turbulence intensity for the simulations, a parametric study was first conducted with the PSP rotor configuration. The influence of the facility walls of the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex was also investigated. Then, the HVAB rotor performance was predicted under conditions obtained by simulations of the PSP rotor. The HVAB rotor performance of the rotor, including thrust/torque coefficients and figure of merit, were analyzed. In addition, flow characteristics, such as laminar-turbulent locations and tip vortex trajectories, were also investigated.