Assignment_January2023

Assignment for AE4202 – CFD for Aerospace Engineers
Introduction
The assignment should be performed in groups of two students. You are free to choose your
partner. Both team members should equally contribute to the work and submit a joint report.
Though not recommended, you could also do the work alone or submit individual reports.
The deliverable is a short report with 10-15 pages, excluding title page and list of
references. The report should be submitted through Brightspace by 28 February 2023.
If you submit the report late, one point will be subtracted from the grade; a second point will
be subtracted if you submit more than one week past the due date.
Problem description
Your task is to perform 2D steady-state RANS simulations on a Tyrrell 026 F1 car front wing
at two different wing heights of h/c = 0.112 (strong ground effects expected) and h/c = 3.36
(quasi freestream conditions), with h being the distance between the ground and the lowest
point of the airfoil, and c being the chord length of the airfoil. The free stream Mach number
is 𝑀! = 0.08 and the chord-length Reynolds number is Rec = 430000.
You can consider ambient flow conditions with static temperature 293K and static pressure
101325 Pa. Model air as a compressible ideal gas with a dynamic viscosity given by
Sutherland’s law. The geometry and boundary conditions are sketched below, coordinates of
the airfoil are provided in a separate file. The inflow boundary condition with turbulence
intensity 0.2% should be imposed far upstream of the airfoils leading edge, and at the upper
boundary. The bottom wall should be a moving boundary with velocity equal to the free-
stream value. Chose an appropriate domain size; the sketch is not to scale!
Tasks
1. Load the coordinates into the mesh generator of your choice. Create a suitable
computational domain positioning the wing at a distance h/c = 0.112 from the ground.
2. Mesh the computational domain with a coarse, structured multi-block grid with about
20 000 – 25 000 cells (grid1). Pay attention to orthogonality, smoothness and
resolution of the boundary layers. Visualize and describe blocking and mesh in the
report and discuss the mesh quality.
3. As boundary conditions, impose an adiabatic wall at the airfoil, and an adiabatic

moving wall for the ground. Impose flow direction, total temperature, total pressure
and turbulence intensity at the inflow and static pressure at the outflow. Use a ‘high-
resolution’ scheme for the spatial discretization and the k-omega turbulence model.
Report the simulation setup and discuss your choices.
4. Perform a steady state simulation with the solver of your choice. Plot the solver
residuals to verify convergence of the simulation for this and all subsequent
simulations.
5. Visualize the flow field: produce contour plots for the static pressure and velocity.
Plot the non-dimensional pressure coefficient Cp along the airfoil surface together
with the provided reference data. Extract the non-dimensional lift and drag
coefficients and summarize them in a table together with the reference lift coefficient.
6. Compute and plot the y+ value of grid1 along the airfoil. Improve and refine the grid
such that y+ < 1 for the refined grid (grid2). The number of cells of grid2 should be
within the range 50 000 – 500 000. Visualize the mesh, pay attention to orthogonality
and smoothness. Perform the simulation and plot y+ for grid2 to verify that the target
resolution was achieved. Critically discuss the mesh quality.
7. Perform the same post processing and visualizations as done for grid1. Include the
new Cp curve in the same figure and the lift and drag coefficients in the same table as
the results for grid 1. Describe and evaluate the results.
8. In order to quantify the effect of numerical errors, repeat the simulation on grid2 with
a first-order upwind scheme. In order to quantify the effect of the turbulence model,
repeat the same simulation with a turbulence model that can better account for
anisotropic turbulence. Visualize and analyze the effect on the results.
9. In order to quantify ground effects, shift the wing away from the ground to a distance
h/c = 3.36 and generate a fine grid, with resolution similar to grid2. Plot the solver
residuals and repeat the same post processing and visualizations as done before.
Compare these results with the case at h/c = 0.112 and with the provided reference
data for h/c = 3.36. Discuss your observations.
10. Summarize your results, discuss them critically and suggest possible improvements.

Assignment_January2023

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Assignment_January2023

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Assignment for AE4202 – CFD for Aerospace Engineers

3. As boundary conditions, impose an adiabatic wall at the airfoil, and an adiabatic

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