Advisor(s) |
Alberto Guardone, Dario Isola, Massimo Biava |
Expected duration |
6 months (one student) |
Description |
In many relevant applications in the aerospace field Computational
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become largely widespread and accepted as a
design tool. However in the field of rotary wings, numerical methods
for aerodynamics are probably not as predominant as in the fixed-wing
applications. Indeed the helicopter feature many additional
difficulties such as: the natural unsteadiness nature of the
flow-field, the strong blade/wake interaction and the essential
coupling between the aerodynamic field and the structure.
Major efforts have been spent at Politecnico di Milano to develop
numerical methods for
rotary wing applications. As result the ROSITA solver has become a
standard tool for
aerodynamic computations at Agusta-Westland. However the on going
research on the development of efficient and accurate schemes continuously sets higher
standards, and very
promising results have been shown by Flowmesh, the most recent solver
developed at DIA.
Flowmesh is a finite-volumes solver for the arbitrary
Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation
of the Euler equations that implements a unique strategy that allows to
perform adaptive
computations without resorting to any interpolation step.
As part of the developing team the student is expected to set-up and
run rotating grid
simulations for a helicopter rotor in hover to predict the aerodynamic
performances.
|
Required tasks |
Grid convergence analysis for the single blade problem.
Mesh generation for
the hovering rotor problem and choice of the boundary conditions, e.g.
actuator disc. Prescription of the velocity of grid that is rotating about the hub.
Computation of the thrust and
power coefficients for the rotor and comparision with the experimental
data and the theory.
|
Tools and languages |
Flowmesh, Gambit, Fortran, Matlab |
Prerequisites |
FEM/FV methods (basic), helicopter theory (good), Fortran (basic) |
Contacts |
Please send an email to Alberto Guardone or Dario Isola, see contacts page. |