Ph.D. Proposal
Shreyas Ashok
(Advisor: Prof. Juergen Rauleder)
"Development of a Lattice-Boltzmann Method Simulation Tool for Real-Time Ship–Rotorcraft Interactional Aerodynamics"
Monday, December 9
12:00 p.m.
Crossland 4111
Abstract
Rotorcraft ship-deck landing operations pose a considerable challenge for pilots because of the highly unsteady aerodynamic interactions between the turbulent ship airwake and rotor wake. Accurate and quick-turnaround rotorcraft interactional aerodynamics models are highly desirable. Yet, most Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods traditionally used for resolving interactional aerodynamics are computationally cost-intensive, and simulation results may take days or weeks to calculate on High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. On the other hand, many low-fidelity methods neglect important physics. A mid-fidelity real-time capable methodology for ship–rotorcraft aerodynamic simulations is highly desirable to improve the fidelity of flight simulation and training models.
A candidate methodology for real-time ship–rotorcraft interactional simulations is the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM). The LBM algorithm is highly tailored towards efficient parallelization, especially on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The high computational efficiency of the LBM makes it a strong candidate for real-time capable ship airwake and ship–rotorcraft interactional modeling.
The proposed thesis will present the development of a GPU-accelerated LBM model for simulations of ship airwakes and ship–rotorcraft aerodynamic interactions. Aerodynamic simulations of the NATO Generic Destroyer ship airwake were shown to correlate well with experimental data from NRC Canada. Furthermore, real-time capable ship–rotor interactional simulations were validated with new Georgia Tech wind tunnel experimental measurements, and they showed that the LBM captured the relevant interactional aerodynamic phenomena well. Finally, a comparative study between the GPU-accelerated LBM and a comparable GPU-accelerated Navier–Stokes-based CFD solver is proposed, and initial results showed that the LBM was 4–17x faster than the Navier–Stokes CFD solver for ship airwake and ship–rotor interactional problems.
Committee
• Prof. Juergen Rauleder – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
• Prof. Marilyn Smith – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Beckett Zhou – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Dr. Dylan Jude – Aerospace Engineering Consultant, Science and Technology Corporation