Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T02:45:43.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Planar potential flow on Cartesian grids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2022

Diederik Beckers
Affiliation:
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1597, USA
Jeff D. Eldredge*
Affiliation:
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1597, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: jdeldre@ucla.edu

Abstract

Potential flow has many applications, including the modelling of unsteady flows in aerodynamics. For these models to work efficiently, it is best to avoid Biot–Savart interactions. This work presents a grid-based treatment of potential flows in two dimensions and its use in a vortex model for simulating unsteady aerodynamic flows. For flows consisting of vortex elements, the treatment follows the vortex-in-cell approach and solves the streamfunction–vorticity Poisson equation on a Cartesian grid after transferring the circulation from the vortices onto the grid. For sources and sinks, an analogous approach can be followed using the scalar potential. The combined velocity field due to vortices, sinks and sources can then be obtained using the Helmholtz decomposition. In this work, we use several key tools that ensure the approach works on arbitrary geometries, with and without sharp edges. First, the immersed boundary projection method is used to account for bodies in the flow and the resulting body-forcing Lagrange multiplier is identified as the bound vortex sheet strength. Second, sharp edges are treated by decomposing the vortex sheet strength into a singular and non-singular part. To enforce the Kutta condition, the non-singular part can then be constrained to remove the singularity introduced by the sharp edge. These constraints and the Poisson equation are formulated as a saddle-point system and solved using the Schur complement method. The lattice Green's function is used to efficiently solve the discrete Poisson equation with unbounded boundary conditions. The method and its accuracy are demonstrated for several problems.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1.(a) Schematic of the grid and the regularization of data from a Lagrangian point ($\bullet$) onto the grid with a discrete Dirac delta function of radius two. Symbols ($\circ$), ($\square$), ($|$) and (-) denote the locations holding the components of the nodes $\mathcal {N}$, cell centres $\mathcal {C}$, horizontal faces $\mathcal {F}_x$ and vertical faces $\mathcal {F}_y$, respectively. Symbols ($\times$) denote the nodes that are affected by the regularization. (b) Two examples of discrete Dirac delta functions of radius two: the $M_4'$ function (——) from Monaghan (1985) and the smoothed three-point function (- - - -) from Yang et al. (2009).

Figure 1

Figure 2.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete streamfunction for randomly positioned point vortices ($\bullet$) of random strengths, and (b) its error ($\circ$) over the shaded area for different grid spacings. Overlaid is an error (——) that scales as $\Delta x^{2}$.

Figure 2

Figure 3.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete streamfunction for a point vortex ($\bullet$) with strength $\varGamma _{v,1}$ at $(R_v,0)$ near a circular cylinder of radius $R_c$ and with a bound circulation $-\varGamma _{v,1}$. The inset shows a closeup of the nodes ($\circ$) and surface points ($\blacksquare$) in the boxed area (- - - -). (b) The scaled discrete vortex sheet strength (——) as a function of the angle $\theta$ measured counter-clockwise from the positive $x$-axis. Here, $k=1$ corresponds to the right-most point on the surface and increases counter-clockwise. Overlaid is the exact continuous solution (- - - -, red dashed). The simulation is performed with $R_v/R_c = 3/2$, $\Delta x/R_c=0.03$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.

Figure 3

Figure 4.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete streamfunction for a horizontally translating circular cylinder with radius $R$, and (b) its scaled discrete vortex sheet strength (——). Overlaid is the exact continuous solution (- - - -, red dashed). The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/R=0.03$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.

Figure 4

Figure 5.(a) Geometry and (b) the scaled bound vortex sheet strength $\boldsymbol{\mathsf{f}}_{0}$, associated with a uniform, unit-strength streamfunction, as a function of the surface point index $p$ divided by the number of surface points $N_s$ for elliptical cylinders with different aspect ratios ($AR$): $\cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \,\cdot$, $AR = 1$; - - - - (red dashed), $AR = 2$; – – – (blue broken dashed), $AR = 3$; —— (green solid line), $AR = \infty$ (flat plate). The simulations are performed with $\Delta x/R=0.004$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=3$.

Figure 5

Figure 6.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete streamfunction for a flat plate of length $c$, at $30^{\circ }$ in a uniform flow $U_\infty$ without enforcement of the Kutta condition. The inset shows a closeup of the nodes ($\circ$) and surface points ($\blacksquare$) in the boxed area (- - - -). The point-wise product of (b) the discrete vortex sheet strength associated with a uniform, unit-strength streamfunction on the body, and (c) the non-singular vector that results from re-scaling the regularization operator, composes (d) the discrete vortex sheet strength. Overlaid is the exact continuous solution (- - - -, red dashed). The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.

Figure 6

Figure 7.(a) Contours (——) of the steady, discrete streamfunction for a flat plate of length $c$ at $30^{\circ }$ in a uniform flow with enforcement of the Kutta condition at the trailing edge. (b) Zoomed-in image of the leading edge showing the streamlines for three values of the streamfunction, (c) the non-singular part of the associated discrete vortex sheet strength for $\Delta x/c=0.01$ with an inset enlarging the boxed area (— — —) and (d) the variation of its error with grid spacing for different values for $\Delta S/\Delta x$: $\cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \,\cdot$, and $\diamond$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=1$; – – – (broken dashed blue) and $\square$ (blue), $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$; - - - - (green dashed) and $\circ$ (green), $\Delta S/\Delta x=3$; —— (red solid line) and $\triangle$ (red), $\Delta S/\Delta x=4$. Overlaid is an error (——) that scales as $\Delta x$.

Figure 7

Figure 8.(a) Contours (——) of the unsteady, discrete streamfunction for a flat plate of length $c$ at $30^{\circ }$ in a uniform flow with release of vorticity into a point vortex ($\bullet$) for enforcement of the Kutta condition at the trailing edge. (b) The non-singular part of the associated discrete vortex sheet strength. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.

Figure 8

Figure 9.Contours (——) of the unsteady, discrete streamfunction for a NACA0012 airfoil with chord length $c$ at $20^{\circ }$, three convective times after impulsively starting a uniform flow $U_{\infty }$. Vorticity is released into a stream of point vortices ($\bullet$) for enforcement of the Kutta condition at the trailing edge. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=1.5$ and $\Delta t U_{\infty }/c=0.075$.

Figure 9

Figure 10.(a) Contours (——) of the unsteady, discrete streamfunction for a flat plate of length $c$ at $30^{\circ }$ in a uniform flow with release of vorticity into two point vortices ($\bullet$) for enforcement of the Kutta condition at both edges. (b) The non-singular part of the associated discrete vortex sheet strength. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.

Figure 10

Figure 11.Effect of increasing $\boldsymbol{\sigma}^{{max}}_{{LE}}/U_\infty$ from $0$ ($\bullet$, green) to 0.05 ($\blacksquare$, blue) and $0.1$ ($\blacktriangle$, red) on (a) the positions of shedded point vortices and (b) the non-singular part of the associated discrete vortex sheet strength for a flat plate of length $c$ at $60^{\circ }$, $0.15$ convective times after impulsively starting a uniform flow $U_\infty$. The inset enlarges the boxed area (— — —) and overlays the positions of the vortices ($\circ$, $\square$ and $\triangle$) obtained using the Biot–Savart method of Darakananda & Eldredge (2019). At the trailing edge, the Kutta condition is enforced. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$ and $\Delta t U_{\infty }/c=0.025$.

Figure 11

Figure 12.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete pressure for a point vortex ($\bullet$) with strength $\varGamma _{v,1}$ at $(R_v,0)$ near a cylinder consisting of $N_s$ points with radius $R_c$ and a bound circulation $-\varGamma _{v,1}$. (b) The scaled discrete pressure at the exterior (——) and interior ($\cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \,\cdot$) of the cylinder. Overlaid is the exact continuous solution (- - - -, red dashed) for the exterior pressure. The simulation is performed with $R_v/R_c = 3/2$, $\Delta x/R_c=0.05$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=1.4$ and $\Delta t \varGamma _{v,1}/R_c^{2}=0.01$.

Figure 12

Figure 13.(a) Contours (——) of the discrete pressure for a point vortex ($\bullet$) with strength $\varGamma _{v,1}$ at $(0,R_v)$ near a flat plate consisting of $N_s$ points with chord length $c$ and a bound circulation $-\varGamma _{v,1}$. The scaled discrete pressure (——) at (b) the top side and (c) the bottom side of the plate. Overlaid is the exact continuous solution (- - - -, red dashed). The simulation is performed with $R_v/c = 0.25$, $\Delta x/c=0.01$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=1.4$ and $\Delta t \varGamma _{v,1}/c^{2}=0.005$.

Figure 13

Figure 14.(a) Numerically simulated trajectories (——) of two point vortices ($\bullet$) of opposite strengths $\varGamma _{v,1}$ and $\varGamma _{v,1}=-\varGamma_{v,}[2]$ being convected past a circular cylinder with radius $R$, and (b) the $x$ component of the associated, numerically simulated impulse (——) in the fluid. Overlaid are the exact continuous trajectories and impulse (- - - -, red dashed). The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/R=0.04$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$ and $\Delta t \varGamma _{v,1}/R^{2}=0.1$.

Figure 14

Figure 15.Comparison of the simulated vortex shedding behind a flat plate of length $c$ at $60^{\circ }$ in a uniform flow using the method in this paper ($\bullet$ and ——) and using the Biot–Savart method of Darakananda & Eldredge (2019) ($\circ$, red open circle and - - - -, red dashed). (a) The positions of the shedded point vortices, (b) the lift coefficient and (c) the moment coefficient, one convective time after impulsively starting the uniform flow. At both edges, the Kutta condition is enforced. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$ and $\Delta t U_{\infty }/c=0.05$.

Figure 15

Figure 16.Evolution of the flow around two flat plates of length $c$ at $60^{\circ }$, vertically separated by a distance of $c/2$, at $t U_{\infty }/c$ equal to (a) $0$, (b) $0.3$, (c) $0.6$ and (d) $0.9$ after impulsively starting a uniform flow. The simulation is performed with $\Delta x/c=0.01$, $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$ and $\Delta t U_{\infty }/c=0.01$.

Figure 16

Figure 17.(a) Contours of the discrete streamfunction for an array of nine circular cylinders with radius $R$, spaced with a gap distance $G$ between each cylinder, of which the bottom left cylinder translates horizontally. (b) Numerically simulated variation ($\bullet$) of the ratio between the largest eigenvalue of the added mass coefficient tensor and the largest self-added mass coefficient with the gap-to-radius ratio $G/R$. Overlaid are the values ($\circ$, red) obtained by Chen (1975) from solving a system of truncated analytical expressions. The simulations are performed with $\Delta x/R=0.05$ and $\Delta S/\Delta x=2$.