A High Order Accuracy Computational Tool for Unsteady Turbulent Flows and Acoustics

The main objective of this research effort is to develop a higher order unsteady turbulent flow solver based on the FDV method, and to exploit its attributes of spanning the whole Mach number range. The well known advantages of the implicit FEM will be inherited along with robust boundary conditions implementation and sound mathematical bases. Efficient parallelization, using MPI through domain decomposition and EBE solution, and supporting unstructured grids will make this effort a long-term investment tool, since all these gained advantages are desirable in virtually every NASA aerodynamics application. To this end, modularization of the in-house developed computer code will be extended to support higher order elements, namely; quadratic, cubic, and eventually spectral elements. The developed higher order code will be tested at various flow conditions starting from the incompressible limit to high supersonics, and including subsonics and transonics.

Similar to NASA, the aerospace industry is in urgent need for such accurate tools that can handle unsteady turbulent flow problems. Existing commercial codes have very low accuracy that one needs to use very large grids to resolve complex problems. With high order methods one can use much smaller grids to accurately capture complex physics such as turbulence and acoustics. This will allow small and large companies to refine their designs and come up with better products that can compete effectively in the market place. The computational tool is not limited to aerospace applications alone but will serve a large spectrum of industries.

The proposed new tool will allow NASA engineers to perform computations on any complex geometry and for flow regimes spanning the entire Mach number spectrum, from incompressible to the hypersonic regimes. An attractive feature of the new tool is the high order of accuracy of the numerical methods used. These methods are becoming necessary to resolve unsteady turbulent flows and especially acoustic radiation. The later problem is becoming the engineering challenge of the 21st century; i.e. noise source identification and control.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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