Robust Navier-Stokes method for predicting unsteady flowfield and aerodynamic characteristics of helicopter rotor

A robust unsteady rotor flowfield solver CLORNS code is established to predict the complex unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of rotor flowfield. In order to handle the difficult problem about grid generation around rotor with complex aerodynamic shape in this CFD code, a parameterized grid generated method is established, and the moving-embedded grids are constructed by several proposed universal methods. In this work, the unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with Spalart-Allmaras are selected as the governing equations to predict the unsteady flowfield of helicopter rotor. The discretization of convective fluxes is accomplished by employing the second-order central difference scheme, third-order MUSCL-Roe scheme, and fifth-order WENO-Roe scheme. Aimed at simulating the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of helicopter rotor, the dual-time scheme with implicit LU-SGS scheme is employed to accomplish the temporal discretization. In order to improve the computational efficiency of hole-cells and donor elements searching of the moving-embedded grid technology, the “disturbance diffraction method” and “minimum distance scheme of donor elements method” are established in this work. To improve the computational efficiency, Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallel method based on subdivision of grid, local preconditioning method and Full Approximation Storage (FAS) multi-grid method are combined in this code. By comparison of the numerical results simulated by CLORNS code with test data, it is illustrated that the present code could simulate the aerodynamic loads and aerodynamic noise characteristics of helicopter rotor accurately. Keywords: Aerodynamic characteristics, Helicopter rotor, Moving-embedded grid, Navier-Stokes equations, Upwind scheme