Computational fluid dynamics simulations of ship airwake with a hovering helicopter rotor

2016
Orbay, Ezgi
In this thesis, Computational Fluid Dynamic simulations of ship airwake for a simple ship geometry are performed for the horizontal and inclined deck configurations and also with and without the helicopter rotor over the deck. An actuator disk model is used for the CFD simulations of a rotor model hovering over the flight deck. All of the computations are performed by using a commercial finite volume CFD flow solver. The unstructured tetrahedral grids are generated in the computational domain including ship geometry and rotor disk. The flow around the Simple Frigate Shape 2 (SFS2) ship geometry is computed by solving RANS and hybrid RANS/LES equations. The steady-state and unsteady computations with different turbulence models are performed. A good validation is obtained with the hybrid RANS/LES turbulence model. After the validation study for the simulation results with the standard (horizontal) model, ship motion due to sea waves is discussed and only an instant of the roll motion is considered as an inclined flight deck problem and investigated. Therefore, a 10 degree rotation about x-axis is given to ship geometry, which illustrates roll motion of ship in rough sea conditions. Comparisons of the results with horizontal (un-inclined) and inclined deck cases are done. Also, a rotor disk with zonal boundary conditions is used with both horizontal and inclined ship models to investigate downwash effect of rotor on ship airwake. Full-scale, four-bladed S-76 helicopter rotor is selected as the rotor model. Rotor only case is first solved and validated with the available wind tunnel data. Then, steady-state simulations for ship with rotor cases are performed. In this part of the study, the effect of ship airwake on rotor performance was not considered, only the effect of hovering rotor wake (downwash) on the ship airwake was taken into account. Flow around the inclined ship deck is observed as different from the horizontal deck. When a rotor is also included over the deck, the flow features such as vortical structures and vertical velocity magnitudes are changed showing that the interactions is more complicated to accurately model and solve. 

Suggestions

Computational fluid dynamics simulations of ship airwake with a hovering helicopter rotor
Orbay, Ezgi; Sezer Uzol, Nilay (2016-01-01)
Computational Fluid Dynamic simulations of ship airwake are performed together with an actuator disk model for a rotor model hovering over the flight deck. The flow around Simple Frigate Shape 2 (SFS2) is computed in steady-state and unsteady conditions by solving RANS and hybrid RANS/LES equations. The unstructured grid is generated for the ship geometry. Also, an actuator disk is added into the model to investigate downwash effect of rotor on ship airwake and interaction of rotor and ship airwake.
Coupling of a multibody simulation tool for the analysis of rotary systems with a panel based flow solver and a navier-stokes flow solver
Soğancı, Semih; Kayran, Altan; Tuncer, İsmail Hakkı; Department of Aerospace Engineering (2018)
In rotorcraft design, aeroelastic effects on the main rotor blades play a critical role in the accurate estimation of the external loading acting on the structure. The external loading is mainly due to the aerodynamic loads and the inertial loads on the main rotor blades. High aspect ratio blades largely deform in flapping direction on top of rigid body flapping, and due to the rigid and elastic flapping motion, the airloads acting on the blades change continuously. Hence, the rotor blade loads analysis sho...
Optimization of aeroelastic flapping motion of thin airfoils in a biplane configuration for maximum thrust
Kaya, Mustafa; Tuncer, İsmail Hakkı; Jones, Kevin D.; Platzer, Max F. (2007-01-01)
An aeroelastic flapping motion of thin airfoils in a biplane configuration is optimized for maximum thrust. Airfoils are attached to swing arms by an elastic joint, which is model led by a torsional spring. A spring-mass system is employed for the aeroelastic coupling. The stiffness coefficient and the mass moment of inertia of the airfoil are optimized for maximum thrust. A gradient based optimization method is employed in a parallel computing environment. Unsteady, low speed flows are computed in parallel...
Improving flow structure and natural convection within fin spacings of plate fin heat sinks
Özet, Mehmet Erdem; Tarı, İlker; Department of Mechanical Engineering (2015)
The main objectives of this thesis are to numerically investigate the previously observed recirculation zones and longitudinal vortices that occur in low fin height plate finned horizontal heat sinks and to improve the flow structures and heat transfer in these zones using various approaches with the help of simulations performed using commercially available CFD software. The approaches used for improvements are replacing the outer most fins with higher ones, introducing gaps on the length of the fins in va...
Computational fluid dynamics simulations of ship airwake
Sezer Uzol, Nilay; Sharma, A.; Long, L.N. (2005-10-01)
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of ship airwakes are discussed in this article. CFD is used to simulate the airwakes of landing helicopter assault (LHA) and landing platform dock-17 (LPD-17) classes of ships. The focus is on capturing the massively separated flow from sharp edges of blunt bodies, while ignoring the viscous effects. A parallel, finite-volume flow solver is used with unstructured grids on full-scale ship models for the CFD calculations. Both steady-state and time-accurate resul...
Citation Formats
E. Orbay, “Computational fluid dynamics simulations of ship airwake with a hovering helicopter rotor,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2016.