Computational Mechanics

Project-5

By
Rayyan Ahmed
190101005
Aero 18/A

Submitted to:
Dr. Umer Suhail

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Institute of Space Technology
13th June, 2022
Mesh:

The meshing is done in fluent itself with the methods as shown. First of all, named

selection of all the faces and body were made and then face sizing was applied on each

face and then body sizing is applied on the entire body. Afterwards, inflation is

applied to cover the boundary layer characteristics. Patch Conforming Method is

further used to eliminate any losses of

data in the mesh.

Quadrilateral Dominant Method alongwith level 2 refinement and edge sizing gives us

this mesh.

Quality of mesh is okay as following is obtained as a result of this mesh:

Element Quality: 0.93

Orthogonal Quality: 0.83559

Skewness: 0.99091 (Max)

Aspect Ratio: 3.47

For inflation the following settings are done:

Inflation is applied on each face as shown. We increase the number of layers to 15 to

cover more region of the boundary layer uptil the buffer layer if necessary.
Tetrahedrons Method is used in Body Sizing as shown above with Patch Conforming

Algorithm as shown above.

Zoomed Mesh:

Thus even though not so structured it is a fine and good quality mesh for analysis.

Solver Settings:

Models:

Energy Equation – On

Viscous Model – Spalart-Allmaras (1 eqn) – Strain-Vorticity Based

To model the turbulence, we turn on the energy equation that uses the energy equation

of Navier-Stokes to model the flow.

The Spalart-Allmaras Model is used because it is widely used in aerospace industry

for aerodynamics analysis. It uses the following transport equation:

It solves kinematic eddy turbulent viscosity model for flow analyzation normally

around walls or edges. And thus it is used here. Although k-epsilon and k-omega can

also be used but are not necessary.

SUBSONIC ANALYSIS
Boundary Conditions:

As we want to make a subsonic analysis first, we assume a Mach Number of 0.5

which is subsonic for our study. Moreover, we assume air as ideal gas in our analysis

and study the analysis at 1 atm i.e sea level.

Reference Values for inlet:

Solution Method:
We choose Coupled and Pseudo Transient Method because this causes the solver to

ignore higher order terms of the equation and solve the transport equation for large

eddies to simplify our results. This also decreases the computational power required

for analysis and thus used.

Convergence Graph:

The solution converged in 47 iterations with residual of e-06.

Post-Processing:

Velocity Vector Plot:

As we can see from the velocity contour, that the at the boundary layer on the airfoil

the velocity is zero as we would expect and as we move away from the surface of the

airfoil, the velocity gradient increases. A smooth change in velocity is seen at the
trailing edge. Moreover, the Pressure Contour shows the stagnations point at the

leading edge identified by a red dot showing a large pressure and thus zero velocity.

Graphs:
Cd
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
Cd

0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cd 0.00826 0.08407 0.1521 0.21982 0.285 0.3481
AoA

Cl
0.8
0.78
0.76
0.74
Cd

0.72
0.7
0.68
0.66
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cl 0.7918 0.78802
Cm
0.77728 0.7609 0.73885349 0.711401
0
AoA
-0.05
-0.1
-0.15
-0.2
Cd

-0.25
-0.3
-0.35
-0.4
-0.45
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cm -0.4182 -0.4137 -0.40338 -0.3865464 -0.3646 -0.3373
AoA
 Conclusion:
We can see from the above graphs the variation of Lift, Drag and Moment

coefficients with change of Angle of Attack. As we would expect from both the

velocity plots and the graphs obtained, the drag increases as AoA increases. The

lift also increases with increase in angle of attack and after stall decreases. The

moment coefficient ideally remains constant but varies slightly as seen from

Moment Coefficient graph

TRANSONIC ANALYSIS

Boundary Conditions:

We again use the Pressure-Based Solver although at transonic speeds the

compressibility effects do start but for simplifying our analysis we may assume
incompressible flow. Moreover, we still use the inlet values as reference with air as ideal

gas again.

Solution Method:

We choose Coupled and Pseudo Transient Method because this causes the solver to

ignore higher order terms of the equation and solve the transport equation for large

eddies to simplify our results. This also decreases the computational power required

for analysis and thus used.

 Convergence Graph:

The graph converges in 85 iterations with residual at e-06

Velocity Vector Plot:

Other than the conditions of the geometry that are falsely identified, we can see that the

velocity change below and above the airfoil. The high velocity above the airfoil at trailing
edge shows that the pressure is quite low and hence pressure based lift is actually being

obtained.

Graphs:

Cd
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
Cd

0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cd 0.108231 0.16442 0.21922 0.27302 0.324291 0.37274
AoA

Cl
0.66
0.64
0.62
0.6
0.58
Cd

0.56
0.54
0.52
0.5
0.48
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cl 0.65043 0.63855 0.6218 0.60019 0.57412 0.54391
AoA
 Cm
0

-0.05

-0.1
Cd
-0.15

-0.2

-0.25
0 5 10 15 20 25
Cm -0.207083 -0.195 -0.17795 -0.1563 -0.13039 -0.100268
AoA

Comments:

We can see that as we would expect the Drag varies as angle of attack increases. Not so

smooth curve for lift is obtained due to assumption of incompressible flow. But

nevertheless it gives reasonable answer. Similarly, the Moment coefficient curve is not

straight horizontal line which is due to our assumption of incompressible flow. As flow

compresses the moment being generated on airfoil also change in magnitude which

would yield different graph.

 SUPERSONIC ANALYSIS

Quality of mesh is okay as following is obtained as a result of this mesh:

Element Quality: 0.9993

Orthogonal Quality: 0.98

Skewness: 0.9219 (Max)

Aspect Ratio: 5.9

Thus even though not so structured it is a fine and good quality mesh for analysis.

Solver Settings:

Models:

The same model Spallart Almaras is used in this analysis as well.

Boundary Conditions:
We use Mach 1.5 for our calculation and obtain the coefficients value and get the

following graphs:

Cl vs Alpha
0.14

0.135

0.13

0.125

0.12

0.115

0.11

0.105
0 5 10 15 20 25

Series1

Cd vs Alpha
0.14

0.135

0.13

0.125

0.12

0.115

0.11

0.105
0 5 10 15 20 25

Series1
 Cm vs Alpha
0.14

0.135

0.13

0.125

0.12

0.115

0.11

0.105
0 5 10 15 20 25

Series1

Conclusion:

We can see that in normal 6 digit series airfoil at supersonic speeds, negative lift

can be seen. This is the reason why we don’t use these airfoils at higher speeds and thus

use thin airfoil instead of thick ones.