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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2

Benchmark of FDNS CFD Code For Direct Connect RBCC Test Data

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis results are compared with experimental data from the Pennsylvania State University's (PSU) Propulsion Engineering Research Center (PERC) rocket based combined cycle (RBCC) rocket-ejector experiments. The PERC RBCC experimental hardware was in a direct-connect configuration in diffusion and afterburning (DAB) operation. The objective of the present work was to validate the Finite Difference Navier Stokes (FDNS) CFD code for the rocket-ejector mode internal fluid mechanics and combustion phenomena. A second objective was determine the best application procedures to use FDNS as a predictive/engineering tool. Three-dimensional CFD analysis was performed. Solution methodology and grid requirements are discussed. CFD results are compared to experimental data for static pressure, Raman Spectroscopy species distribution data and RBCC net thrust and specified impulse.

Ruf, J. H.↗

SCISEAL: A CFD Code for Analysis of Fluid Dynamic Forces in Seals

A 3D CFD code, SCISEAL, has been developed and validated. Its capabilities include cylindrical seals, and it is employed on labyrinth seals, rim seals, and disc cavities. State-of-the-art numerical methods include colocated grids, high-order differencing, and turbulence models which account for wall roughness. SCISEAL computes efficient solutions for complicated flow geometries and seal-specific capabilities (rotor loads, torques, etc.).

Althavale, Mahesh M.↗

Porting OVERFLOW CFD Code to GPUs: To Hackathons and Beyond!

OVERFLOW is an overset, structured computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code written in Fortran which is widely used in the government, industry, and academia. Over the last several years the OVERFLOW developers have been working to port miniapps based on computationally expensive parts of OVERFLOW to run on GPUs, primarily using OpenACC. This effort started at our first hackathon in 2019 and since then the OVERFLOW team has attended two additional hackathons (virtually). These hackathon environments have provided a great place to collaborate with others and learn from experts. These learning experiences enabled porting two miniapps to run effectively on NVIDIA GPUs using OpenACC. The first miniapp focused on motifs found in the solver itself and the final ported version runs three times fast ona single V100 compared to a 40 core, dual-socket Intel Skylake node. The speed up in this solverminiapp required multiple design changes including increasing the amount of parallelism available and the amount of work performed in each kernel. The second miniapp focused on overset MPI communication, also saw significant speedups over the CPU implementation using a CUDA-aware MPI implementation through OpenACC. This presentation will discuss our experience at the hackathons, our process of porting the miniapps to run on the GPUs, and several lessons learned throughout.

OpenACC↗

Radiation Coupling with the FUN3D Unstructured-Grid CFD Code

The HARA radiation code is fully-coupled to the FUN3D unstructured-grid CFD code for the purpose of simulating high-energy hypersonic flows. The radiation energy source terms and surface heat transfer, under the tangent slab approximation, are included within the fluid dynamic ow solver. The Fire II flight test, at the Mach-31 1643-second trajectory point, is used as a demonstration case. Comparisons are made with an existing structured-grid capability, the LAURA/HARA coupling. The radiative surface heat transfer rates from the present approach match the benchmark values within 6%. Although radiation coupling is the focus of the present work, convective surface heat transfer rates are also reported, and are seen to vary depending upon the choice of mesh connectivity and FUN3D ux reconstruction algorithm. On a tetrahedral-element mesh the convective heating matches the benchmark at the stagnation point, but under-predicts by 15% on the Fire II shoulder. Conversely, on a mixed-element mesh the convective heating over-predicts at the stagnation point by 20%, but matches the benchmark away from the stagnation region.

Wood, William A.↗

General Dynamics' perspective on CFD code calibration/validation

Information is given in viewgraph form on General Dynamics' perspective on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code calibration and validation. Topics covered include a hypersonic blunted cone, a hypersonic wedge/cylinder, a wing vortex defined by Mach contours, pressure distributions, and 3D turbulent flow behind a 2D flat plate as measured in a water tunnel with a laser Doppler velocimeter.

Bhateley, I. C.↗

Cars Thermometry in a Supersonic Combustor for CFD Code Validation

An experiment has been conducted to acquire data for the validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes used in the design of supersonic combustors. The primary measurement technique is coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS), although surface pressures and temperatures have also been acquired. Modern- design- of-experiment techniques have been used to maximize the quality of the data set (for the given level of effort) and minimize systematic errors. The combustor consists of a diverging duct with single downstream- angled wall injector. Nominal entrance Mach number is 2 and enthalpy nominally corresponds to Mach 7 flight. Temperature maps are obtained at several planes in the flow for two cases: in one case the combustor is piloted by injecting fuel upstream of the main injector, the second is not. Boundary conditions and uncertainties are adequately characterized. Accurate CFD calculation of the flow will ultimately require accurate modeling of the chemical kinetics and turbulence-chemistry interactions as well as accurate modeling of the turbulent mixing

Cutler, A. D.↗

Research Efforts in Development of NPARC 2D/3D CFD Codes

The objective of the research was to develop a capability in the NPARC computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code to efficiently solve for unsteady airflows with moving geometry and grids. The application of interest was the unsteady flow in a high-speed aircraft inlet operating at the supercritical condition in which a terminal shock resides within the diffuser.

Slater, John W.↗

Supersonic Coaxial Jet Experiment for CFD Code Validation

A supersonic coaxial jet facility has been designed to provide experimental data suitable for the validation of CFD codes used to analyze high-speed propulsion flows. The center jet is of a light gas and the coflow jet is of air, and the mixing layer between them is compressible. Various methods have been employed in characterizing the jet flow field, including schlieren visualization, pitot, total temperature and gas sampling probe surveying, and RELIEF velocimetry. A Navier-Stokes code has been used to calculate the nozzle flow field and the results compared to the experiment.

Cutler, A. D.↗

Turbulence Model Implementation and Verification in the SENSEI CFD Code

This paper outlines the implementation and verification of the negative Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model into the SENSEI CFD code. The SA-neg turbulence model is implemented in a flexible, object-oriented framework where additional turbulence models can be easily added. In addition to outlining the new turbulence modeling framework in SENSEI, an overview of the other general improvements to SENSEI is provided. The results for four 2D test cases are compared to results from CFL3D and FUN3D to verify that the turbulence models are implemented properly. Several differences in the results from SENSEI, CFL3D, and FUN3D are identified and are attributed to differences in the implementation and discretization order of the boundary conditions as well as the order of discretization of the turbulence model. When a solid surface is located near or intersects an inflow or outflow boundary, higher order boundary conditions should be used to limit their effect on the forces on the surface. When the turbulence equations are discretized using second order spatial accuracy, the edge of the eddy viscosity profile seems to be sharper than when a first order discretization is used. However, the discretization order of the turbulence equation does not have a significant impact on output quantities of interest, such as pressure and viscous drag, for the cases studied.

Jackson, Charles W.↗

CFD code evaluation

The task carried out under this research grant covers research on accuracy and efficiency of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) stategies, error estimates for convective terms, and antidiffusion. These basic studies are considered important in evaluating available CFD codes which will be the main activities for the next year.

Chung, T. J.↗

An improved far field drag calculation method for nonlinear CFD codes

An improved method to calculate drag based on far field conditions is presented and demonstrated. The method is illustrated using two CFD codes, PARC and CFL3D, and examining their ability to preserve lift and drag coefficients along grid line defined integration paths. The flow fields were generated by solving the Euler equations for a NACA 0012 airfoil at a free stream Mach number of 0.8 and angle of attack of 1.25 degrees. In comparison to force coefficients obtained by surface pressure integration, neither code acceptably preserved both force coefficients throughout the near and far fields. An investigation into the relationship between numerical prediction error and calculated force coefficients revealed a direct connection between solution mass conservation error and force coefficients error. A method to correct the predicted force coefficients based on integrated mass conservation error is described and demonstrated. The corrected force coefficients for both codes are shown to be more accurate than the uncorrected values. The correction method is applicable to both two and three dimensions and is independent of the algorithm used to generate the flow field.

Sirbaugh, James R.↗

Streamlined Convergence Acceleration for CFD Codes

Enigma, a simplified interface to the PETSc library, is shown to enable the rapid solution of discrete partial differential equations. Two CFD codes, LAURA and HyperSolve, use Enigma to compute steady solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. Using PETSc, Enigma is shown to provide a Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov method (JFNK), globalized with pseudotransient continuation, that improves efficiency over the point-implicit relaxation method traditionally used by LAURA. It is shown that iterative error has a large impact on surface heat transfer predicted by LAURA on an axisymmetric sphere-cone geometry. Also, the convergence rate of HyperSolve simulating subsonic flow over a delta wing geometry with the JFNK method is shown to be more efficient than employing a defect correction method as the nonlinear solver.

Thompson, Kyle B.↗

Recent Improvements in the FDNS CFD Code and its Associated Process

This viewgraph presentation gives an overview on recent improvements in the Finite Difference Navier Stokes (FDNS) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code and its associated process. The development of a utility, PreViewer, has essentially eliminated the creeping of simple human error into the FDNS Solution process. Extension of PreViewer to encapsulate the Domain Decompression process has made practical the routine use of parallel processing. The combination of CVS source control and ATS consistency validation significantly increases the efficiency of the CFD process.

West, Jeff S.↗

Utilizing GPUs to Accelerate Turbomachinery CFD Codes

GPU computing has established itself as a way to accelerate parallel codes in the high performance computing world. This work focuses on speeding up APNASA, a legacy CFD code used at NASA Glenn Research Center, while also drawing conclusions about the nature of GPU computing and the requirements to make GPGPU worthwhile on legacy codes. Rewriting and restructuring of the source code was avoided to limit the introduction of new bugs. The code was profiled and investigated for parallelization potential, then OpenACC directives were used to indicate parallel parts of the code. The use of OpenACC directives was not able to reduce the runtime of APNASA on either the NVIDIA Tesla discrete graphics card, or the AMD accelerated processing unit. Additionally, it was found that in order to justify the use of GPGPU, the amount of parallel work being done within a kernel would have to greatly exceed the work being done by any one portion of the APNASA code. It was determined that in order for an application like APNASA to be accelerated on the GPU, it should not be modular in nature, and the parallel portions of the code must contain a large portion of the code's computation time.

computer programming↗

Validation of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Code for Supersonic Axisymmetric Base Flow

The ability to accurately and efficiently calculate the flow structure in the base region of bodies of revolution in supersonic flight is a significant step in CFD code validation for applications ranging from base heating for rockets to drag for protectives. The FDNS code is used to compute such a flow and the results are compared to benchmark quality experimental data. Flowfield calculations are presented for a cylindrical afterbody at M = 2.46 and angle of attack a = O. Grid independent solutions are compared to mean velocity profiles in the separated wake area and downstream of the reattachment point. Additionally, quantities such as turbulent kinetic energy and shear layer growth rates are compared to the data. Finally, the computed base pressures are compared to the measured values. An effort is made to elucidate the role of turbulence models in the flowfield predictions. The level of turbulent eddy viscosity, and its origin, are used to contrast the various turbulence models and compare the results to the experimental data.

Tucker, P. Kevin↗

CFD code calibration and inlet-fairing effects on a 3D hypersonic powered-simulation model

A three-dimensional (3D) computational study has been performed addressing issues related to the wind tunnel testing of a hypersonic powered-simulation model. The study consisted of three objectives. The first objective was to calibrate a state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code in its ability to predict hypersonic powered-simulation flows by comparing CFD solutions with experimental surface pressure dam. Aftbody lower surface pressures were well predicted, but lower surface wing pressures were less accurately predicted. The second objective was to determine the 3D effects on the aftbody created by fairing over the inlet; this was accomplished by comparing the CFD solutions of two closed-inlet powered configurations with a flowing-inlet powered configuration. Although results at four freestream Mach numbers indicate that the exhaust plume tends to isolate the aftbody surface from most forebody flowfield differences, a smooth inlet fairing provides the least aftbody force and moment variation compared to a flowing inlet. The final objective was to predict and understand the 3D characteristics of exhaust plume development at selected points on a representative flight path. Results showed a dramatic effect of plume expansion onto the wings as the freestream Mach number and corresponding nozzle pressure ratio are increased.

Huebner, Lawrence D.↗

CFD Code Calibration and Inlet-Fairing Effects On a 3D Hypersonic Powered-Simulation Model

A three-dimensional (3D) computational study has been performed addressing issues related to the wind tunnel testing of a hypersonic powered-simulation model. The study consisted of three objectives. The first objective was to calibrate a state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code in its ability to predict hypersonic powered-simulation flows by comparing CFD solutions with experimental surface pressure data. Aftbody lower surface pressures were well predicted, but lower surface wing pressures were less accurately predicted. The second objective was to determine the 3D effects on the aftbody created by fairing over the inlet; this was accomplished by comparing the CFD solutions of two closed-inlet powered configurations with a flowing- inlet powered configuration. Although results at four freestream Mach numbers indicate that the exhaust plume tends to isolate the aftbody surface from most forebody flow- field differences, a smooth inlet fairing provides the least aftbody force and moment variation compared to a flowing inlet. The final objective was to predict and understand the 3D characteristics of exhaust plume development at selected points on a representative flight path. Results showed a dramatic effect of plume expansion onto the wings as the freestream Mach number and corresponding nozzle pressure ratio are increased.

Huebner, Lawrence D.↗