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IllinoisRocstar LLC 1

Experimental and Computational Investigation of


Nozzles in a Crosswind Environment

IllinoisRocstar LLC
60 Hazelwood Drive
P. O. Box 3001
Champaign, IL 61826-3001



Mr. William Dick
Chief Executive Officer
Phone: (217) 417-0885
Email: wdick@illinoisrocstar.com
Website: http://www.illinoisrocstar.com

Command: NAVAIR
Topic: N07-T001

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Heated air emanating from exhaust exits has
a significant impact on other systems that reside
above, below, and downstream of the exhaust
ports. These systems include antennas, radio
systems, control surfaces, as well as personnel
and other aircraft on flight decks. There is a
current need to predict the characteristics of
these heated plumes, especially those issuing from non-conventional exit shapes.
Many years of research literature is available concerning submerged and heated plumes flowing from
traditional circular or near-circular exits, both with and without a crosswind. However, there does not
currently exist a reliable, validated, computational code for plume prediction, especially for non-
traditional shapes and groups of shapes. In particular, very little information is available today for heated
plumes in a crosswind emanating from slotted or high aspect ratio nozzles. Computational codes have
been sought that are able to accurately predict the very complex flow field and characteristics of these
non-conventional plumes. The ability to predict the temperature and behavior of heated plumes will be
immediately useful for helicopter, fixed wing, and surface ship engine exhaust system designs.
Moreover analysis and design of exhaust systems in myriad environments crosswinds, temperature
and humidity fields, altitudes and pressures, etc. are engineering problems that exist in many different
vehicle systems, including ships, aircraft, and land-based vehicles. Computational analysis of the flow
from these systems and the thermal impact of hot exhaust impingement on critical downwind components
require validated, predictive simulation tools and validation flow field databases. Such a validated,
predictive, computational capability is needed so that the warfighter and/or his environmentally sensitive
equipment may be placed in the best location. Extended lifetime of components, reduced detection, and
improved safety are further benefits of a validated capability.
Existing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are not validated for a full range of exhaust
conditions. There is no applicable validated simulation tool available to the Navy for assessment of heated

NAVAIR Public Release 09-124 Distribution: Statement A-"Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited."
IllinoisRocstar LLC 2
plumes in crosswind environments. Potential Navy program users include naval surface ships, as well as
fixed and rotary wing aircraft programs essentially all Navy programs with subsonic, heated exhaust
plumes.

WHO CAN BENEFIT?
The tool under development in this project, Stackstar, is a general computational fluid dynamics
solver that is applicable to a wide range of problems beyond the targeted Navy surface ship platforms.
Once validated for subsonic heated flows arising from surface ship funnels and jets, Stackstar will be
useful for simulations in many situations. Any scenario for which the plume characteristics from a driven,
heated duct are required will be a potential use of the tool. Similar exhausts from land-based vehicles,
such as tanks or other large transport trucks, could be modeled, as can aircraft exhaust plumes from
helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft operated across DoD, as well as fixed smokestack installations at DoD
bases throughout the world. Additionally, validated modeling of non-DoD industrial situations is
anticipated:
Commercial Aircraft Vendors
Vendors of commercial helicopters and aircraft would benefit from the validated predictive modeling
capabilities of the tool, especially those that are DoD suppliers which can subsequently provide reliable
predictive simulations of aircraft exhausts to be delivered to DoD components.
Industrial Stacks and Vents
Many industrial plants have stacks and vents, either singly or in arrays from which heated plumes
exit. These stacks do not normally generate concerns for downstream impact on equipment or people.
However, it is anticipated that special-case analyses for Environmental Impact Statement production, or
other analyses where having detailed, validated predictions of downstream flows are required, will benefit
from use of the tool developed in this work.
Cruise Ships
The commercial cruise-ship industry will benefit from application of a tool for heated-plume
simulation as they develop new and larger cruise ships for deployment. It is of interest to ship designers to
know the environments developed from stacks on these cruise ships for the same reasons that interest
Navy ship designers (plume impacts on downstream equipment, personnel, and in this case, customers).
Transition
Potential commercial users Northrop Grumman, Sikorsky, Boeing, Raytheon, LockheedMartin,
ATK, MS2.

BASELINE TECHNOLOGY
The Navy uses a variety of in-house and commercial CFD applications to perform plume analyses.
These packages contain wide varieties of different CFD models and capabilities, but none have been
carefully validated against data specifically developed for the purpose. The experimental database under
development, combined with careful validation of the Rocstar/Stackstar code utilizing these data, will
provide the validated capability needed by the Navy (and other services) for confident modeling low-
speed, heated jets in crosswind environments.

TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION
For the past dozen years, a team of faculty, staff, and student researchers at the Center for Simulation
of Advanced Rockets (CSAR) has been developing Rocstar, a comprehensive, integrated, highly parallel
software suite for complex three-dimensional multiphysics simulations.
i
Its individual component codes
are based in turn on basic research and development in turbulence modeling, multiphase flow, constitutive
NAVAIR Public Release 09-124 Distribution: Statement A-"Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited."
IllinoisRocstar LLC 3
modeling, combustion
chemistry, computational
mechanics, coupling
methodology, etc. Now
relatively mature, Rocstar
provides by far the most
advanced rocket simulation
capability available anywhere
for analyzing performance
and reliability issues in
existing solid rocket motors
and for virtual prototyping of
new designs. Through
collaborations with
IllinoisRocstar LLC (IR), the
solid propulsion programs of
DoD, NASA, and the U.S.
rocket industry increasingly
rely upon Rocstar. Recent
examples include analyses for
NASA of a proposed five-segment version of the Space Shuttle booster for use in the Constellation
program, simulations for USAF to characterize the distribution of aluminum impingement on rocket
nozzles, and multiscale modeling of solid propellants for ATK Inc.
Although the original target for Rocstar was solid propellant rocket engines, Rocstar is capable of
simulating a wide variety of multicomponent systems involving fluid dynamics, structural dynamics,
combustion, and their interactions. Rocstar features multiple state-of-the-art solvers for various types of
physical components, but what truly sets it apart is its sophisticated integration framework that enables
the straightforward coupling of independently developed physics modules with a minimal number of
modifications, and also provides an array of services including parallel I/O, automatic mesh modification
and load balancing, performance profiling, accurate and conservative transfer of data between meshes,
surface propagation, and overall parallel orchestration. Rocstar has been applied to several fluid-structure
interaction and multiphase flow problems in addition to rocketry, including simulations of heated plumes
in a crosswind (Figure 2), noise from helicopter blades, fuel injectors, volcanoes, and the effects of wind
on tall buildings.
The physics applications (solvers) in Rocstar are general-purpose, discipline-specific code modules
that interact with the integration framework by calling a comprehensive set of library routines to register
and share their data and to take advantage of the advanced capabilities included in the framework.
Fluid Dynamics
Rocstar includes two complementary cell-centered, finite-volume compressible flow solvers that
share a substantial portion of their code base. The fluid equations are formulated on moving meshes
(ALE) to handle geometrical changes without the loss of accuracy typically incurred when transferring
solutions to new meshes. Rocflo uses either a centered or an upwind scheme with Roe flux splitting on
multi-block structured meshes. Rocflu operates on unstructured tetrahedral or mixed-element meshes. It
employs a novel high-order WENO-like approach, as well as the HLLC scheme to handle strong transient
flows including shocks.

Fig. 1: Rocstar simulation results for circular stack and heated plume in
crossflow showing instantaneous thermal and vorticity isosurfaces.
IllinoisRocstar LLC studies show that experimental and numerical time-
averaged temperatures correlate within a few percent throughout entire test
space.
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IllinoisRocstar LLC 4

a.
Stress relief features

An additional compressible flow solver, RocfloCM,
utilizes curvilinear, structured, overlapping meshes and
high-order finite-difference methods. Complex geometrical
objects are described by a set of body-fitted meshes that
may overlap. The code supports both explicit and implicit
(e.g., Pade) finite differences and arbitrarily deforming
meshes. In addition, the code allows for the adaptive use of
WENO-like schemes and incorporates a hyperviscosity-
based shock-capturing scheme. The filtered Navier-Stokes
equations may be solved when turbulence is included
(LES).
The fluid solvers are integrated with additional physics
modules for simulating turbulent and multiphase fluid
flows. Non-ideal gases, chemical species, droplets, smoke,
and radiation can all be included with full, two-way
coupling. These supporting integrated physics modules
include Rocturb, which provides three classes of
turbulence models, including large eddy simulation (LES),
Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), and hybrid
models (either LES with a near-wall model or
detached eddy simulation). Rocpart treats
burning aluminum droplets by tracking
Lagrangian superparticles, each representing
many droplets, while smoke particles are
evolved using our novel equilibrium Eulerian
method implemented in Rocsmoke. Additional
modules, Rocspecies and Rocrad, enable
simulations with multiple chemical species and
radiation (flux-limited diffusion approximation).

CURRENT STATE OF DEVELOPMENT
The Rocstar code, which forms the basis for
the validated Stackstar module, is a research
level code that has been used for the simulation
of problems beginning with the internal ballistics
of large (and small) solid propellant rocket
motors, to the external flow around subsonic and
supersonic aircraft and rockets, to more esoteric
uses such as modeling the flows around buildings


b.

d.


c.
Fig. 2: Predictive science validation builds on strong success of existing code base.
Rocstar results from fully coupled, 3-D fluid/structure/combustion simulations of
NASA Space Shuttle solid rocket booster shortly after ignition (a-c) and Air Force
BATES motor (d). (a) Head end section shows local deformation of propellant due to
pressure in core gas (top) and resultant surface temperatures (bottom). (b) Gas
temperatures (top; red is hotter) and aluminum particle size and location (bottom; red
is larger) in core flow. (c) Solid propellant deformation and temperature isosurfaces in
fluid core. (d) Number of impacting aluminum droplets on rocket motor nozzle (top;
red is higher) and mean diameter of droplets (bottom; red is larger).
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IllinoisRocstar LLC 5
in an urban environment and volcanic eruptions.
The initial codebase at the start of the STTR Phase 2 program is estimated to be TRL 4. The goal of
this Phase 2 project is to i) produce an experimental library of high-quality flow data for heated jets in
crossflow, and ii) validate that the Rocstar code can reproduce the experimental results within five
percent, and will thus form the validated basis of the Stackstar module. It is anticipated that at the
conclusion of the Phase 2 program, the initial Stackstar module will be at TRL 5-6. Initial prototypes of
possible interfaces for Stackstar to the underlying simulation modules will be prepared during the Phase 2
Option. Implementation of specific graphical interfaces, and extension of the validation to field-scale
scenarios will be the subject of Phase 3 contracts.

REFERENCES
Dr. Andrew M. Eaton; Manager, Fluid Dynamics Section, ATK Space Systems; 435-863-2547;
Andrew.Eaton@ATK.com
Prof. Michael Heath; Director, Computational Science and Engineering Program; University of Illinois;
2270 Digital Computer Laboratory, Urbana, IL 61801; 217-333-6268; heath @illinois.edu
SBIR TPOC: 301-342-8533

ABOUT THE COMPANY
IllinoisRocstar LLC, based in Champaign, Illinois, uses the Rocstar simulation software suite to
analyze fluid flows, combustion, materials, structures, and their interactions while solving engineering
and scientific problems for commercial clients and government agencies. Employing integrated
simulation software, the members of IllinoisRocstar
utilize first-principles based physics for high-fidelity
numerical analysis in complex changing geometries.
IllinoisRocstar is also experienced in micromechanics,
combustion modeling, and granular material pack
modeling, using Rocpack, Rocfire, and other
simulation software. The principals and members of
the company are seasoned leaders and senior scientists
using advanced computation and simulation
techniques in these areas to understand the
implications of 3-D fluid-structure interactions on the
design and application of materials and engineered
devices. IllinoisRocstar seeks to commercialize,
extend and implement simulation software, and use
these tools in commercial engineering analysis and as
a product line of stand-alone software.



i
Dick, W. A., R. A. Fiedler, and M. T. Heath, Building Rocstar: Simulation Science for Solid Propellant
Rocket Motors, AIAA 2006-4590, July 2006.
Capabilities and Strengths of
IllinoisRocstar
Simulations of fluid-structure interactions with
combustion
CFD, structural analysis, materials science,
multiple length and time scale applications,
computational science and environments,
verification, validation, risk, and uncertainty
quantification
True 3-D capability and assessments
3-D meshing and visualization capabilities
Rapid turnaround of complex simulations
Massively parallel implementations, scalable to
1,000s of processors
Export control and ITAR capable
NAVAIR Public Release 09-124 Distribution: Statement A-"Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited."

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