Heated air emanating from exhaust exits has a significant impact on other systems. There does not currently exist a reliable, validated, computational code for plume prediction. The ability to predict the temperature and behavior of heated plumes will be immediately useful.
Original Description:
Original Title
CFD Experimental and Computational Investigation of.pdf
Heated air emanating from exhaust exits has a significant impact on other systems. There does not currently exist a reliable, validated, computational code for plume prediction. The ability to predict the temperature and behavior of heated plumes will be immediately useful.
Heated air emanating from exhaust exits has a significant impact on other systems. There does not currently exist a reliable, validated, computational code for plume prediction. The ability to predict the temperature and behavior of heated plumes will be immediately useful.
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. NAVAIR Public Release 09-124 Distribution: Statement A-"Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited." 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). NAVAIR Public Release 09-124 Distribution: Statement A-"Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited." 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."