Parallel solution of lifting rotors in hover and forward flight

Abstract

SUMMARYAn implicit unsteady, multiblock, multigrid, upwind solver including mesh deformation capability, and structured multiblock grid generator, are presented and applied to lifting rotors in both hover and forward flight. To allow the use of very fine meshes and, hence, better representation of the flow physics, a parallel version of the code has been developed. It is demonstrated that once the grid density is sufficient to capture enough turns of the tip vortices, hover exhibits oscillatory behaviour of the wake, even using a steady formulation. An unsteady simulation is then presented, and detailed analysis of the time-accurate wake history is performed and compared to theoretical predictions. Forward flight simulations are also presented and, again, grid density effects on the wake formation investigated. Parallel performance of the code using up to 1024 CPU's is also presented.