Comparison of Aircraft Loads Using URANS and Actuator Disk Modelling of Propellers at High Incidence

Abstract

A comparison of simulations are performed using both steady RANS with an actuator disk model to represent the propellers and URANS with full rotating blade geometry, for the Clean Sky 2 flying test bed 2, which is a regional turboprop with co-rotating propellers. The simulations are performed for a cruise configuration at Mach 0.2 and a Reynolds number of 11.933 × 10 6 for a range of angles of attack and side slip angles from zero to 20 𝑜 and 25 𝑜 respectively. The generation of the database for the actuator disk model is explained, along with the calibration of the blade angle to give a specified thrust. Aerodynamic coefficients for both the airframe and the propellers are extracted and compared with wind-tunnel data from an atmospheric wind-tunnel test undertaken in a previous Clean Sky 2 project (ReLOAD).