Ph.D. Proposal

Erk Kurban

(Advisor: Prof. Juergen Rauleder)

Atmospheric Boundary Layer Effects on Ship Airwakes Using Synthetic Eddy Method in Lattice-Boltzmann Simulations

Monday, February 10

10:00 a.m. 

Price Gilbert Library 4222

Abstract 

Shipdeck landing is amongst the most challenging operations a modern navy deals with. To ensure such operations are safely carried out, extensive training of prospective pilots is required. One of the first steps of such training is exercises with flight simulators. To realistically simulate the conditions in the wake of a ship, CFD simulations should be conducted. There are different CFD methodologies to obtain an accurate ship airwake simulation, one of them is the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM). It has been proven that the LBM is a computationally efficient mid-fidelity method to solve various flow cases. Previous studies showed that the accuracy of the LBM ship airwake predictions was acceptable, hence results were deemed suitable to be used in flight simulators.

Many aspects need to be considered in a ship airwake simulation to represent real-world conditions as closely as possible. The atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), being a natural phenomenon, needs to be modeled in such simulations. It is relatively straightforward to model the steady part of the ABL as it can be modeled by power law or logarithmic law profiles. However, the inherent turbulence of the ABL is not represented in such mean velocity profiles. There are numerous methods to simulate the inherent turbulence in numerical simulations. While some of those methods have been proven to be ineffective, some others have been proven to be computationally expensive. With the Synthetic Eddy Method, it is possible to retain the computational efficiency of the LBM, while accurately simulating the inherent turbulence. This study aims to inspect the effects of the ABL on the ship airwake by simulating a realistic ABL by using the Synthetic Eddy Method. Using SEM-generated ABL inflow, ship airwake data was obtained from the LBM simulation, and results were compared to experimental data.

Committee

· Prof. Juergen Rauleder – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)

· Prof. Suhas S. Jain – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

· Prof. Giuseppe Quaranta – Department of Aerospace Science and Technology, Politecnico di Milano

· Prof. Marilyn J. Smith – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

· Prof. Beckett Y. Zhou – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering