FLOW Unsteady Aerodynamics Suite

Simulation engine of mixed-fidelity unsteady aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. This suite brings together mid and high-fidelity aerodynamics tools developed at BYU's FLOW Lab: GeometricTools (geometric engine), FLOWVLM (VLM and strip theory solver), CCBlade (blade element momentum solver), MyPanel (3D inviscid panel solver), and FLOWVPM (viscous vortex particle method). The aeroacoustic solver integrates PSU-WOPWOP (FW-H solver), FLOW's BPM, and FLOWNoise, obtaining both tonal and broadband acoustic noise.

This package is written for Julia 1.4.2 or higher.

Official documentation: https://flow.byu.edu/FLOWUnsteady/

FEATURES

• Viscous, unsteady wake mixing of rotors and lifting surfaces.
• Fully resolved rotor-on-rotor, rotor-on-wing, wing-on-rotor, and wing-on-wing interactions.
• Fully resolved unsteady loads during prescribed kinematic maneuvers.

LIMITATIONS

• Viscous drag and separation is only captured through strip theory, without attempting to shed separation wakes.
• No viscous drag is captured through VLM and panel models.

FUTURE WORK

• Coupling of aerodynamic loads and flight path allowing dynamic simulations.
• Bluff body separation and panel-predicted viscous drag (?).

For validation and numerical recommendations, check this notebook in the documentation: docs/resources/validation.ipynb.

For example simulations, check this notebook: docs/resources/examples.ipynb.

Folders and Files

• src/: Source code.
• examples/: Example simulations.
• docs/resources/: Documentation (open Jupyter notebooks with nbviewer).
  • docs/resources/instructions-setup.md: Instructions for setting up this package.
  • docs/resources/validation.ipynb: Validation of models implemented in this package and numeric observations.
  • docs/resources/examples.ipynb: Results of example simulations.
• examples/rotornoise/singlerotor.ipynb: Rotor aeroacoustic noise validation and example.

Dependencies

• GeometricTools
• FLOWVLM
• MyPanel
• FLOWVPM: Contact Ed Alvarez or the FLOW Lab.
• Paraview : Not needed, but examples call Paraview for visualization of outputs.

Related Projects

• Unsteady eVTOL transition
• Wind-harvesting aircraft design

Sponsors

Examples

HEAVING WING: examples/heavingwing.jl

CROSS-WIND CIRCULAR PATH: examples/circularpath.jl

HOVERING ROTOR: examples/singlerotor.jl

INTERACTING TANDEM HEAVING WING: examples/tandemheavingwing.jl

BLOWN WING: examples/blownwing/blownwing.jl

Wind-harvesting Aircraft: examples/windcraft/windcraft.jl (in progress)

eVTOL TRANSITION: examples/vahana2/vahana.jl, VIDEO

Rotor Aeroacoustic Noise: examples/rotornoise/singlerotor.ipynb

Framework Flowchart

Publications

• Alvarez, E. J., & Ning, A. (2021, in progress). Unsteady Mixed-fidelity Aerodynamics Solver for Maneuvering Multirotor Aircraft. AIAA SciTech Forum. [PDF]
  
  
• Alvarez, E. J., Schenk, A., Critchfield, T., and Ning, A. (2020, in review). Rotor-on-Rotor Aeroacoustic Interactions of Multirotor in Hover. Journal of the American Helicopter Society. [SLIDES][PDF]
  
  
• Alvarez, E. J., (2020). Quasi-steady Aerodynamics Solver for a High-fidelity Controls Framework. FLOWUnsteady Documentation. [PDF]
  
  
• Alvarez, E. J., & Ning, A. (2020). High-fidelity Modeling of Multirotor Aerodynamic Interactions for Aircraft Design. AIAA Journal. DOI: 10.2514/1.J059178 [PDF]
  
  
• Alvarez, E. J., & Ning, A. (2019). Modeling Multirotor Aerodynamic Interactions Through the Vortex Particle Method. AIAA AVIATION Forum. DOI: 10.2514/6.2019-2827 [SLIDES][PDF]
  
  
• Alvarez, E. J., & Ning, A. (2018). Development of a Vortex Particle Code for the Modeling of Wake Interaction in Distributed Propulsion. AIAA AVIATION Forum. DOI: 10.2514/6.2018-3646 [SLIDES][PDF]
  
  

Authorship

• Main developer : Eduardo J Alvarez
• Email : [email protected]
• Website : edoalvarez.com
• Created : Oct 2019
• License : MIT License