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Articles

Vorticity Confinement Technique and Blade Element Method for Accurate Propeller Modelling

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Pages 719-730 | Received 17 Aug 2022, Accepted 23 Dec 2022, Published online: 10 Jan 2023
 

Abstract

Traditional CFD techniques are not effective in preserving wakes and vortices over larger distances and for longer times. Vorticity Confinement (VC) technique helps counter the numerical diffusion to preserve wakes and vortices. In the current study, VC was used to accurately model the propeller flow using two different propeller modelling techniques after being implemented into SU2, an open-source CFD solver. One resolves flow past the propeller by solving RANS equations in a rotating reference frame. Another is a simplified propeller modelling technique in which the propeller needs to be modelled as a disk, and the propeller loading is determined using the blade element method. In the first case, VC enabled tip and hub vortices to convect over larger distances from the propeller, along with an improved resolution of gradients in the tip vortex. With the latter technique, VC helped conserve the tangential velocities for longer distances.

Acknowledgments

The first author is grateful to CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), Bangalore, for the computational facilities and AcSIR for providing a platform to work at CSIR-NAL. Thanks are due to Dr. V Ramesh, Dr. Venkat Iyengar of CSIRNAL and Prof Joseph Mathew of IISc for their suggestions. We thank Mr. Josy P Pullockara for reviewing the code and other members of the CTFD division, CSIR-NAL, for their support. We further thank the SU2 foundation and SU2 community for developing the SU2 code andmaking it open-source. We appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions by the anonymous reviewers, which resulted in improvements to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The first author is financially supported by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India under CSIR-GATE-JRF scheme.

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