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At least 1,621 records · Page 90
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NASA NTRS1992

Receptivity of a laminar boundary layer to the interaction of a three-dimensional roughness element with time-harmonic free-stream disturbances

Receptivity of a laminar boundary layer to the interaction of time-harmonic free-stream disturbances with a 3D roughness element is studied. The 3D nonlinear triple-deck equations are solved numerically to provide the basic steady-state motion. At high Reynolds numbers, the governing equations for the unsteady motion are the unsteady linearized 3D triple-deck equations. These equations can only be solved numerically. In the absence of any roughness element, the free-stream disturbances, to the first order, produce the classical Stokes flow, in the thin Stokes layer near the wall (on the order of our lower deck). However, with the introduction of a small 3D roughness element, the interaction between the hump and the Stokes flow introduces a spectrum of all spatial disturbances inside the boundary layer.

Tadjfar, M.↗
NASA NTRS1992

The Burnett shock structures in low density hypersonic flows

One-dimensional shock structures in low density hypersonic flows have been studied numerically by solving the Burnett and Navier-Stokes equations. A new lower-upper scheme has been developed to obtain the steady and stationary normal shock solutions by the time-marching technique. The new scheme directly employs the implicit finite difference method without computing the eigenvalues, and it is first-order accurate in time and second-order accurate in space. The computed shock structures have been compared with available experimental data, and they are in good agreements. Numerical results show that the Burnett calculations has less numerical diffusion than the Navier-Stokes calculations does. As to the shock thickness, the Burnett solutions are apparently superior than the Navier-Stokes solutions.

Liaw, Goang-Shin↗
NASA NTRS1993

Zonally-decoupled DSMC solutions of hypersonic blunt body wake flows

Direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) solutions are presented for the hypersonic flow behind a blunt body in which the wake region is solved in a zonally-decoupled manner. The forebody flow is solved separately using either a DSMC or a Navier-Stokes method, and the forebody exit plane solution is specified as the inflow condition to the decoupled DSMC solution of the wake region. Results are presented for a 70-deg, blunted cone at flow conditions that can be accommodated in existing low-density wind tunnels with the Knudsen number based on base diameter ranging from 0.03 to 0.001. The zonally-decoupled solutions show good agreement with fully-coupled DSMC solutions of the wake flow densities and velocities. The wake closure predicted by the zonally-decoupled solutions is in better agreement with fully-coupled results than that predicted by a fully-coupled Navier-Stokes method indicating the need to account for rarefaction in the wake for the cases considered. The combined use of Navier-Stokes for the forebody with a decoupled DSMC solution for the wake provides an efficient method for solving transitional blunt-body flows where the forebody flow is continuum and the wake is rarefied.

Wilmoth, Richard G.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Polarimetric emission from anisotropic media for passive remote sensing of sea ice

The polarimetric emission from an anisotropic medium with applications to the passive microwave remote sensing of sea ice is investigated. Based on the fluctuation-dissipation theory, the Stokes vector is obtained for the thermally exicted electromagnetic radiation from an anisotropic object. By modeling sea ice as a layered anisotropic medium, the Stokes vector representing the polarimetric emission is illustrated for various geophysical conditions. It is found that the difference in the brightness temperatures measured at two surface temperatures is correlated with the thickness of the sea ice. For cases where the c-axis of sea ice is aligned or not random in the horizontal plane, the calculated brightness temperatures show a periodic variation when plotted as a function of the azimuthal angle of the observation direction, indicating that the polarimetric Stokes parameters can be used to detect the direction of c-axes in sea ice.

Yueh, S. H.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Simulations of curved turbulent boundary layers

The objective of this work is to develop a space-time accurate numerical method for the solution of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in generalized coordinates. The resulting code is to be used for direct and large-eddy simulation of turbulence in complex geometries. In a previous paper, the system of Navier-Stokes equations in general curvilinear coordinates was solved by a second-order accurate finite-difference scheme. Satisfactory results were obtained for several flows in two and three dimensions. The system of Navier-Stokes for the fluxes are given in Orlandi (1989). The main deficiency of the numerical scheme was the large CPU time required for the solution of the Poisson equation for the 'pressure' field. The point SOR relaxation, in conjunction with a multigrid scheme, was used for the Poisson equation. In some cases, particularly with very fine grids, it was impossible to obtain a divergent-free flow. A preliminary attempt is made to compute the spatially evolving flow of Swearingen & Blackwelder. To reduce the streamwise distance, the inflow was at a distance x = 60 cm from the leading edge.

Orlandi, Paolo↗
NASA NTRS1994

Turbulence models and Reynolds analogy for two-dimensional supersonic compression ramp flow

Results of the application of turbulence models and the Reynolds analogy to the Navier-Stokes computations of Mach 2.9 two-dimensional compression ramp flows are presented. The Baldwin-Lomax eddy viscosity model and the kappa-epsilon turbulence transport equations for the turbulent momentum flux modeling in the Navier-Stokes equations are studied. The Reynolds analogy for the turbulent heat flux modeling in the energy equation was also studied. The Navier-Stokes equations and the energy equation were numerically solved for the flow properties. The Reynolds shear stress, the skin friction factor, and the surface heat transfer rate were calculated and compared with their measurements. It was concluded that with a hybrid kappa-epsilon turbulence model for turbulence modeling, the present computations predicted the skin friction factors of the 8 deg and 16 deg compression ramp flows and with the turbulent Prandtl number Pr(sub t) = 0.93 and the ratio of the turbulent thermal and momentum transport coefficients mu(sub q)/mu(sub t) = 2/Prt, the present computations also predicted the surface heat transfer rates beneath the boundary layer flow of the 16 compression ramp.

Wang, Chi R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Combined LAURA-UPS solution procedure for chemically-reacting flows

A new procedure seeks to combine the thin-layer Navier-Stokes solver LAURA with the parabolized Navier-Stokes solver UPS for the aerothermodynamic solution of chemically-reacting air flowfields. The interface protocol is presented and the method is applied to two slender, blunted shapes. Both axisymmetric and three dimensional solutions are included with surface pressure and heat transfer comparisons between the present method and previously published results. The case of Mach 25 flow over an axisymmetric six degree sphere-cone with a noncatalytic wall is considered to 100 nose radii. A stability bound on the marching step size was observed with this case and is attributed to chemistry effects resulting from the noncatalytic wall boundary condition. A second case with Mach 28 flow over a sphere-cone-cylinder-flare configuration is computed at both two and five degree angles of attack with a fully-catalytic wall. Surface pressures are seen to be within five percent with the present method compared to the baseline LAURA solution and heat transfers are within 10 percent. The effect of grid resolution is investigated and the nonequilibrium results are compared with a perfect gas solution, showing that while the surface pressure is relatively unchanged by the inclusion of reacting chemistry the nonequilibrium heating is 25 percent higher. The procedure demonstrates significant, order of magnitude reductions in solution time and required memory for the three dimensional case over an all thin-layer Navier-Stokes solution.

Wood, William A.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Direct numerical simulation of sheared turbulent flow

The summer assignment to study sheared turbulent flow was divided into three phases which were: (1) literature survey, (2) computational familiarization, and (3) pilot computational studies. The governing equations of fluid dynamics or Navier-Stokes equations describe the velocity, pressure, and density as functions of position and time. In principle, when combined with conservation equations for mass, energy, and thermodynamic state of the fluid a determinate system could be obtained. In practice the Navier-Stokes equations have not been solved due to the nonlinear nature and complexity of these equations. Consequently, the importance of experiments in gaining insight for understanding the physics of the problem has been an ongoing process. Reasonable computer simulations of the problem have occured as the computational speed and storage of computers has evolved. The importance of the microstructure of the turbulence dictates the need for high resolution grids in extracting solutions which contain the physical mechanisms which are essential to a successful simulation. The recognized breakthrough occurred as a result of the pioneering work of Orzag and Patterson in which the Navier-Stokes equations were solved numerically utilizing a time saving toggling technique between physical and wave space, known as a spectral method. An equally analytically unsolvable problem, containing the same quasi-chaotic nature as turbulence, is known as the three body problem which was studied computationally as a first step this summer. This study was followed by computations of a two dimensional (2D) free shear layer.

Harris, Vascar G.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A time-accurate finite volume method valid at all flow velocities

A finite volume method to solve the Navier-Stokes equations at all flow velocities (e.g., incompressible, subsonic, transonic, supersonic and hypersonic flows) is presented. The numerical method is based on a finite volume method that incorporates a pressure-staggered mesh and an incremental pressure equation for the conservation of mass. Comparison of three generally accepted time-advancing schemes, i.e., Simplified Marker-and-Cell (SMAC), Pressure-Implicit-Splitting of Operators (PISO), and Iterative-Time-Advancing (ITA) scheme, are made by solving a lid-driven polar cavity flow and self-sustained oscillatory flows over circular and square cylinders. Calculated results show that the ITA is the most stable numerically and yields the most accurate results. The SMAC is the most efficient computationally and is as stable as the ITA. It is shown that the PISO is the most weakly convergent and it exhibits an undesirable strong dependence on the time-step size. The degenerated numerical results obtained using the PISO are attributed to its second corrector step that cause the numerical results to deviate further from a divergence free velocity field. The accurate numerical results obtained using the ITA is attributed to its capability to resolve the nonlinearity of the Navier-Stokes equations. The present numerical method that incorporates the ITA is used to solve an unsteady transitional flow over an oscillating airfoil and a chemically reacting flow of hydrogen in a vitiated supersonic airstream. The turbulence fields in these flow cases are described using multiple-time-scale turbulence equations. For the unsteady transitional over an oscillating airfoil, the fluid flow is described using ensemble-averaged Navier-Stokes equations defined on the Lagrangian-Eulerian coordinates. It is shown that the numerical method successfully predicts the large dynamic stall vortex (DSV) and the trailing edge vortex (TEV) that are periodically generated by the oscillating airfoil. The calculated streaklines are in very good comparison with the experimentally obtained smoke picture. The calculated turbulent viscosity contours show that the transition from laminar to turbulent state and the relaminarization occur widely in space as well as in time. The ensemble-averaged velocity profiles are also in good agreement with the measured data and the good comparison indicates that the numerical method as well as the multipletime-scale turbulence equations successfully predict the unsteady transitional turbulence field. The chemical reactions for the hydrogen in the vitiated supersonic airstream are described using 9 chemical species and 48 reaction-steps. Consider that a fast chemistry can not be used to describe the fine details (such as the instability) of chemically reacting flows while a reduced chemical kinetics can not be used confidently due to the uncertainty contained in the reaction mechanisms. However, the use of a detailed finite rate chemistry may make it difficult to obtain a fully converged solution due to the coupling between the large number of flow, turbulence, and chemical equations. The numerical results obtained in the present study are in good agreement with the measured data. The good comparison is attributed to the numerical method that can yield strongly converged results for the reacting flow and to the use of the multiple-time-scale turbulence equations that can accurately describe the mixing of the fuel and the oxidant.

Kim, S.-W.↗
NASA NTRS1995

On the breakup of viscous liquid threads

A one-dimensional model evolution equation is used to describe the nonlinear dynamics that can lead to the breakup of a cylindrical thread of Newtonian fluid when capillary forces drive the motion. The model is derived from the Stokes equations by use of rational asymptotic expansions and under a slender jet approximation. The equations are solved numerically and the jet radius is found to vanish after a finite time yielding breakup. The slender jet approximation is valid throughout the evolution leading to pinching. The model admits self-similar pinching solutions which yield symmetric shapes at breakup. These solutions are shown to be the ones selected by the initial boundary value problem, for general initial conditions. Further more, the terminal state of the model equation is shown to be identical to that predicted by a theory which looks for singular pinching solutions directly from the Stokes equations without invoking the slender jet approximation throughout the evolution. It is shown quantitatively, therefore, that the one-dimensional model gives a consistent terminal state with the jet shape being locally symmetric at breakup. The asymptotic expansion scheme is also extended to include unsteady and inerticial forces in the momentum equations to derive an evolution system modelling the breakup of Navier-Stokes jets. The model is employed in extensive simulations to compute breakup times for different initial conditions; satellite drop formation is also supported by the model and the dependence of satellite drop volumes on initial conditions is studied.

Papageorgiou, Demetrios T.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Asymptotic behavior of solutions of the renormalization group K-epsilon turbulence model

Presently, the only efficient way to calculate turbulent flows in complex geometries of engineering interest is to use Reynolds-average Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. As compared to the original Navier-Stokes problem, these RANS equations posses much more complicated nonlinear structure and may exhibit far more complex nonlinear behavior. In certain cases, the asymptotic behavior of such models can be studied analytically which, aside from being an interesting fundamental problem, is important for better understanding of the internal structure of the models as well as to improve their performances. The renormalization group (RNG) K-epsilon turbulence model, derived directly from the incompresible Navier-Stokes equations, is analyzed. It has already been used to calculate a variety of turbulent and transitional flows in complex geometries. For large values of the RNG viscosity parameter, the model may exhibit singular behavior. In the form of the RNG K-epsilon model that avoids the use of explicit wall functions, a = 1, so the RNG viscosity parameter must be smaller than 23.62 to avoid singularities.

Yakhot, A.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Effects of Chemistry on Blunt-Body Wake Structure

Results of a numerical study are presented for hypersonic low-density flow about a 70-deg blunt cone using direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) and Navier-Stokes calculations. Particular emphasis is given to the effects of chemistry on the near-wake structure and on the surface quantities and the comparison of the DSMC results with the Navier-Stokes calculations. The flow conditions simulated are those experienced by a space vehicle at an altitude of 85 km and a velocity of 7 km/s during Earth entry. A steady vortex forms in the near wake for these freestream conditions for both chemically reactive and nonreactive air gas models. The size (axial length) of the vortex for the reactive air calculations is 25% larger than that of the nonreactive air calculations. The forebody surface quantities are less sensitive to the chemistry than the base surface quantities. The presence of the afterbody has no effect on the forebody flow structure or the surface quantities. The comparisons of DSMC and Navier-Stokes calculations show good agreement for the wake structure and the forebody surface quantities.

Dogra, Virendra K.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Solution-Adaptive Cartesian Cell Approach for Viscous and Inviscid Flows

A Cartesian cell-based approach for adaptively refined solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in two dimensions is presented. Grids about geometrically complicated bodies are generated automatically, by the recursive subdivision of a single Cartesian cell encompassing the entire flow domain. Where the resulting cells intersect bodies, polygonal cut cells are created using modified polygon-clipping algorithms. The grid is stored in a binary tree data structure that provides a natural means of obtaining cell-to-cell connectivity and of carrying out solution-adaptive mesh refinement. The Euler and Navier-Stokes equations are solved on the resulting grids using a finite volume formulation. The convective terms are upwinded: A linear reconstruction of the primitive variables is performed, providing input states to an approximate Riemann solver for computing the fluxes between neighboring cells. The results of a study comparing the accuracy and positivity of two classes of cell-centered, viscous gradient reconstruction procedures is briefly summarized. Adaptively refined solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are shown using the more robust of these gradient reconstruction procedures, where the results computed by the Cartesian approach are compared to theory, experiment, and other accepted computational results for a series of low and moderate Reynolds number flows.

Coirier, William J.↗
NASA NTRS1999

An Experimental and Numerical Study of Icing Effects on the Performance and Controllability of a Twin Engine Aircraft

In September 1997 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) requested assistance from the NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC) Icing Branch in the investigation of an aircraft accident that was suspected of being caused by ice contamination. In response to the request NASA agreed to perform an experimental and computational study. The main activities that NASA performed were LERC Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) testing to define ice shapes and 2-D Navier-Stokes analysis to determine the performance degradation that those ice shapes would have caused. An IRT test was conducted in January 1998. Most conditions for the test were based upon raw and derived data from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) recovered from the accident and upon the current understanding of the Meteorological conditions near the accident. Using a two-dimensional Navier-Stokes code, the flow field and resultant lift and drag were calculated for the wing section with various ice shapes accreted in the IRT test. Before the final calculations could be performed extensive examinations of geometry smoothing and turbulence were conducted. The most significant finding of this effort is that several of the five-minute ice accretions generated in the IRT were found by the Navier-Stokes analysis to produce severe lift and drag degradation. The information generated by this study suggests a possible scenario for the kind of control upset recorded in the accident. Secondary findings were that the ice shapes accreted in the IRT were mostly limited to the protected pneumatic boot region of the wing and that during testing, activation of the pneumatic boots cleared most of the ice.

Reehorst, A.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Development and Validation of a Fast, Accurate and Cost-Effective Aeroservoelastic Method on Advanced Parallel Computing Systems

Progress to date towards the development and validation of a fast, accurate and cost-effective aeroelastic method for advanced parallel computing platforms such as the IBM SP2 and the SGI Origin 2000 is presented in this paper. The ENSAERO code, developed at the NASA-Ames Research Center has been selected for this effort. The code allows for the computation of aeroelastic responses by simultaneously integrating the Euler or Navier-Stokes equations and the modal structural equations of motion. To assess the computational performance and accuracy of the ENSAERO code, this paper reports the results of the Navier-Stokes simulations of the transonic flow over a flexible aeroelastic wing body configuration. In addition, a forced harmonic oscillation analysis in the frequency domain and an analysis in the time domain are done on a wing undergoing a rigid pitch and plunge motion. Finally, to demonstrate the ENSAERO flutter-analysis capability, aeroelastic Euler and Navier-Stokes computations on an L-1011 wind tunnel model including pylon, nacelle and empennage are underway. All computational solutions are compared with experimental data to assess the level of accuracy of ENSAERO. As the computations described above are performed, a meticulous log of computational performance in terms of wall clock time, execution speed, memory and disk storage is kept. Code scalability is also demonstrated by studying the impact of varying the number of processors on computational performance on the IBM SP2 and the Origin 2000 systems.

Goodwin, Sabine A.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Numerical Study of Turbulence Model Predictions for the MD 30P/30N and NHLP-2D Three-Element Highlift Configurations

This report details calculations for the McDonnell-Douglas 30P/30N and the NHLP-2D three-element highlift configurations. Calculations were performed with the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes code ISAAC to study the effects of various numerical issues on high lift predictions. These issues include the effect of numerical accuracy on the advection terms of the turbulence equations, Navier-Stokes versus the thin-layer Navier-Stokes approximation, an alternative formulation of the production term, and the performance of several turbulence models. The effect of the transition location on the NHLP-2D flow solution was investigated. Two empirical transition models were used to estimate the transition location.

Turbulence modeling↗
NASA NTRS1999

Proper Orthogonal Decomposition in Optimal Control of Fluids

In this article, we present a reduced order modeling approach suitable for active control of fluid dynamical systems based on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The rationale behind the reduced order modeling is that numerical simulation of Navier-Stokes equations is still too costly for the purpose of optimization and control of unsteady flows. We examine the possibility of obtaining reduced order models that reduce computational complexity associated with the Navier-Stokes equations while capturing the essential dynamics by using the POD. The POD allows extraction of certain optimal set of basis functions, perhaps few, from a computational or experimental data-base through an eigenvalue analysis. The solution is then obtained as a linear combination of these optimal set of basis functions by means of Galerkin projection. This makes it attractive for optimal control and estimation of systems governed by partial differential equations. We here use it in active control of fluid flows governed by the Navier-Stokes equations. We show that the resulting reduced order model can be very efficient for the computations of optimization and control problems in unsteady flows. Finally, implementational issues and numerical experiments are presented for simulations and optimal control of fluid flow through channels.

Ravindran, S. S.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Attenuation of Gas Turbulence by a Nearly Stationary Dispersion of Fine Particles

Turbulence attenuation by greater than a factor of two has been observed in many practical gas flows carrying volume fractions as small as 0.01% of dispersed particles. Particles which cause such attenuation usually are smaller than the smallest scales of the turbulence and have time constants 5 to 10 times greater than the time scale of a typical turbulent eddy. That is, strongly attenuating particles usually have Stokes numbers in the range of 5 to 10, indicating that they do not respond to the turbulent fluctuations, but instead just fall through the flow responding only to the mean flow. There are two mechanisms by which free falling particles may attenuate turbulence. First, the unresponsive particles act as a drag on the turbulent eddies, passing energy from the turbulent eddies to the small scale wakes of the particles where it is quickly dissipated by viscosity. The second mechanism is more complicated. Particles falling under gravity convert gravitational potential energy to turbulent velocity fluctuations. If the particles are large, this mechanism increases the overall turbulence level. However, with moderate size particles, the small scale turbulence generated apparently distorts the turbulent eddies leading to more rapid dissipation. Unfortunately, this conclusion is supported only by circumstantial evidence to date. The objectives of the experiment are to use microgravity to separate the two mechanisms. A region of nearly-isotropic decaying turbulence with zero mean flow will be formed in a box in the microgravity environment. Different sets of particles with Stokes numbers in the range of 2 to 20 will be dispersed in the flow. With zero gravity and no mean fluid velocity the particles will have zero mean velocity. With the large Stokes numbers, the fluctuating velocities will also be small. Therefore, the only attenuation mechanism will be the direct action of the particles on the turbulence. Control experiments will also be done in which the particles fall through the measurement volume. Measurements will be acquired using a high resolution image velocimetry (PIV) system being developed specifically for work in particle-laden flows. The measurements will include the decay of the turbulence kinetic energy under various particle loadings. The spatial spectra of the turbulence will also be measured. In a second set of experiments, the interaction of a single eddy with a collection of nearly stationary particles will be examined. The eddy will be a vortex ring emitted by a jet pulse through an orifice. The distortion of the vortex under the influence of the particles will be examined to gain a better understanding of how fine particles can cause such large reductions in turbulence levels. This experiment could not be conducted in terrestrial gravity because the high particle velocities would overwhelm the relatively low speed motion of the vortex ring. This experimental program is just getting underway. The initial challenge is to build a closed facility containing reasonably homogeneous and isotropic turbulence with zero mean velocity. Our approach is to use a set of synthetic jets mounted on the periphery of a transparent plexiglass box to create the turbulence. A synthetic jet is a plenum chamber with an orifice open to the volume of interest. The volume of the chamber fluctuates periodically so alternately a jet is ejected from the volume or flow is drawn back in as a sink. The asymmetry of this situation results in a net transport of momentum and kinetic energy into the volume of interest. The present apparatus includes eight synthetic jets each powered independently by a six inch loudspeaker. The synthetic jets discharge through ejector tubes to increase the scale of the turbulence. Construction of the apparatus is now complete and preliminary flow visualization studies have been conducted. The PIV system is also under development. A compact dual-pulse YAG laser has been acquired as the light source and special software is under development to allow simultaneous measurements of both the particle phase and the fluid phase (marked by fine tracers).

Paris, A. D.↗