Computational Fluid Dynamics for Downwind Sails

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horst J. Richter ◽  
Kevin C. Horrigan ◽  
J. B. Braun

In recent years computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has demonstrated the ability to predict sail and appendage forces under upwind conditions or at angles of attack conducive to attached flow. Few sail or yacht designers would be without this tool, at least to check or confirm performance estimates made with other methods. More advanced codes (RANS) solve the full Navier-Stokes equations, thus including viscous effects and placing relatively less importance to fully attached flow. Due to the large proportion of downwind sailing, where the sails might operate in separated airflow, it is useful to evaluate the performance of sails as used off wind despite the added uncertainty resulting from the elasticity of the light material that must be used to allow the sails to fill properly at the low relative wind speeds. While downwind sail forces have been often tested in wind tunnels, CFD codes are now sufficiently advanced to predict such forces with confidence similar to that achieved in prediction of upwind forces. This paper presents a new method of linking a CFD code with a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) computer program, for evaluating the sail shapes and proper trim for known sail materials and fiber orientation. A VPP (Velocity Prediction Program) is used to predict leeway, heel, and boat speed for a given true wind angle and wind speed. Then the CFD code computes the airflow around the sails for the given onset flow conditions and provides the pressure distribution on the sails as needed for the FEA program. This is done in full scale considering the boundary layer above the water. This process of updating the pressure for the FEA program from the CFD code is repeated several times until optimal trim and sail shapes can be obtained for best sailing performance, e.g., the maximum driving force. Thus, this method can be considered a "Virtual Wind Tunnel" (VWT).

2012 ◽  
Vol 184-185 ◽  
pp. 944-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Jun Gong ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
Xue Yi Fan ◽  
Da Ming Xu

For a clear and comprehensive opinion on segregated SIMPLE algorithm in the area of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) during liquid processing of materials, the most significant developments on the SIMPLE algorithm and its variants are briefly reviewed. Subsequently, some important advances during last 30 years serving as increasing numerical accuracy, enhancing robustness and improving efficiency for Navier–Stokes (N-S) equations of incompressible fluid flow are summarized. And then a so-called Direct-SIMPLE scheme proposed by the authors of present paper introduced, which is different from SIMPLE-like schemes, no iterative computations are needed to achieve the final pressure and velocity corrections. Based on the facts cited in present paper, it conclude that the SIMPLE algorithm and its variants will continue to evolve aimed at convergence and accuracy of solution by improving and combining various methods with different grid techniques, and all the algorithms mentioned above will enjoy widespread use in the future.


2013 ◽  
Vol 753-755 ◽  
pp. 2731-2735
Author(s):  
Wei Cao ◽  
Zheng Hua Wang ◽  
Chuan Fu Xu

The graphics processing unit (GPU) has evolved from configurable graphics processor to a powerful engine for high performance computer. In this paper, we describe the graphics pipeline of GPU, and introduce the history and evolution of GPU architecture. We also provide a summary of software environments used on GPU, from graphics APIs to non-graphics APIs. At last, we present the GPU computing in computational fluid dynamics applications, including the GPGPU computing for Navier-Stokes equations methods and the GPGPU computing for Lattice Boltzmann method.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
pp. 2316
Author(s):  
Laura Río-Martín ◽  
Saray Busto ◽  
Michael Dumbser

In this paper, we propose a novel family of semi-implicit hybrid finite volume/finite element schemes for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), in particular for the approximate solution of the incompressible and compressible Navier-Stokes equations, as well as for the shallow water equations on staggered unstructured meshes in two and three space dimensions. The key features of the method are the use of an edge-based/face-based staggered dual mesh for the discretization of the nonlinear convective terms at the aid of explicit high resolution Godunov-type finite volume schemes, while pressure terms are discretized implicitly using classical continuous Lagrange finite elements on the primal simplex mesh. The resulting pressure system is symmetric positive definite and can thus be very efficiently solved at the aid of classical Krylov subspace methods, such as a matrix-free conjugate gradient method. For the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, the schemes are by construction asymptotic preserving in the low Mach number limit of the equations, hence a consistent hybrid FV/FE method for the incompressible equations is retrieved. All parts of the algorithm can be efficiently parallelized, i.e., the explicit finite volume step as well as the matrix-vector product in the implicit pressure solver. Concerning parallel implementation, we employ the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) standard in combination with spatial domain decomposition based on the free software package METIS. To show the versatility of the proposed schemes, we present a wide range of applications, starting from environmental and geophysical flows, such as dambreak problems and natural convection, over direct numerical simulations of turbulent incompressible flows to high Mach number compressible flows with shock waves. An excellent agreement with exact analytical, numerical or experimental reference solutions is achieved in all cases. Most of the simulations are run with millions of degrees of freedom on thousands of CPU cores. We show strong scaling results for the hybrid FV/FE scheme applied to the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, using millions of degrees of freedom and up to 4096 CPU cores. The largest simulation shown in this paper is the well-known 3D Taylor-Green vortex benchmark run on 671 million tetrahedral elements on 32,768 CPU cores, showing clearly the suitability of the presented algorithm for the solution of large CFD problems on modern massively parallel distributed memory supercomputers.


1999 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 218-228
Author(s):  
Bin Chen ◽  
Frederick Stern

Computational fluid dynamics results are presented of four-quadrant flow for marine-propulsor P4381. The solution method is unsteady three-dimensional incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations in generalized coordinates with the Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model. The method was used previously for the design condition for marine-propulsor P4119, including detailed verification and validation. Only limited verification is performed for P4381. The validation is limited by the availability of four-quadrant performance data and ring vortex visualizations for the crashback conditions. The predicted performance shows close agreement with the data for the forward and backing conditions, whereas for the crashahead and crashback conditions the agreement is only qualitative and requires an ad hoc cavitation correction. Also, the predicted ring vortices for the crashback conditions are in qualitative agreement with the data. Extensive calculations enable detailed description of flow characteristics over a broad range of propulsor four-quadrant operations, including surface pressure and streamlines, velocity distributions, boundary layer and wake, separation, and tip and ring vortices. The overall results suggest promise for Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes methods for simulating marine-propulsor flow, including offdesign. However, important outstanding issues include additional verification and validation, time-accurate solutions, and resolution and turbulence modeling for separation and tip and ring vortices.


1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Newling ◽  
S. J. Gibbs ◽  
J. A. Derbyshire ◽  
D. Xing ◽  
L. D. Hall ◽  
...  

The flow of Newtonian liquids through a pipe system comprising of a series of abrupt expansions and contractions has been studied using several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, and also by computational fluid dynamics. Agreement between those results validates the assumptions inherent to the computational calculation and gives confidence to extend the work to more complex geometries and more complex fluids, wherein the advantages of MRI (utility in opaque fluids and noninvasiveness) are unique. The fluid in the expansion-contraction system exhibits a broad distribution of velocities and, therefore, presents peculiar challenges to the measurement technique. The MRI protocols employed were a two-dimensional tagging technique, for rapid flow field visualisation, and three-dimensional echo-planar and gradient-echo techniques, for flow field quantification (velocimetry). The Computational work was performed using the FIDAP package to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. The particular choice of parameters for both MRI and computational fluid dynamics, which affect the results and their agreement, have been addressed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 108513
Author(s):  
Zhaobin Li ◽  
Benjamin Bouscasse ◽  
Guillaume Ducrozet ◽  
Lionel Gentaz ◽  
David Le Touzé ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Yi Liu ◽  
Lu Zou ◽  
Zao-Jian Zou

Understanding the manoeuvring performance of a ship requires accurate predictions of the hydrodynamic forces and moments on the ship. In the present study, the hydrodynamic forces and moments on a manoeuvring container ship at various rudder and drift angles are numerically predicted by solving the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations. The effects of dynamic sinkage and trim on the hydrodynamic forces are first investigated together with a grid dependency study to estimate the numerical error and uncertainty caused by grid discretization, and with a validation study combining the experimental data. The results show that the effect of dynamic sinkage and trim is non-negligible, since including it improves the hydrodynamic force predictions and reduces the numerical error and uncertainty, and the averaged error and uncertainty are smaller than the other computational fluid dynamics results where sinkage and trim were fixed with given values from model tests. Therefore, it is included in the subsequent systematic simulations regarding the influence of rudder and drift angles. The computed forces, moments and rudder coefficients at different rudder and drift angles on the container ship are compared with the benchmark model test data. From the computations, all the predicted quantities are in satisfactory agreement with the experimental data. The details of the flow filed and hydrodynamic forces, such as pressure distributions, transverse force distributions along the hull, velocity contours, streamlines and wave patterns are presented and discussed, and a deep insight into the physical mechanism in the hydrodynamic forces on a manoeuvring ship is obtained.


2017 ◽  
Vol 121 (1246) ◽  
pp. 1795-1807 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Bekemeyer ◽  
R. Thormann ◽  
S. Timme

ABSTRACTSeveral critical load cases during the aircraft design process result from atmospheric turbulence. Thus, rapidly performable and highly accurate dynamic response simulations are required to analyse a wide range of parameters. A method is proposed to predict dynamic loads on an elastically trimmed, large civil aircraft using computational fluid dynamics in conjunction with model reduction. A small-sized modal basis is computed by sampling the aerodynamic response at discrete frequencies and applying proper orthogonal decomposition. The linear operator of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations plus turbulence model is then projected onto the subspace spanned by this basis. The resulting reduced system is solved at an arbitrary number of frequencies to analyse responses to 1-cos gusts very efficiently. Lift coefficient and surface pressure distribution are compared with full-order, non-linear, unsteady time-marching simulations to verify the method. Overall, the reduced-order model predicts highly accurate global coefficients and surface loads at a fraction of the computational cost, which is an important step towards the aircraft loads process relying on computational fluid dynamics.


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