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Large-eddy simulation and streamline coordinate analysis of flow over an axisymmetric hull

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2021

Nicholas Morse
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Krishnan Mahesh*
Affiliation:
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: kmahesh@umn.edu

Abstract

A new perspective on the analysis of turbulent boundary layers on streamlined bodies is provided by deriving the axisymmetric Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations in an orthogonal coordinate system aligned with streamlines, streamline-normal lines and the plane of symmetry. Wall-resolved large-eddy simulation using an unstructured overset method is performed to study flow about the axisymmetric DARPA SUBOFF hull at a Reynolds number of $Re_L = 1.1 \times 10^{6}$ based on the hull length and free-stream velocity. The streamline-normal coordinate is naturally normal to the wall at the hull surface and perpendicular to the free-stream velocity far from the body, which is critical for studying bodies with concave streamwise curvature. The momentum equations naturally reduce to the differential form of Bernoulli's equation and the $s$–$n$ Euler equation for curved streamlines outside of the boundary layer. In the curved laminar boundary layer at the front of the hull, the streamline momentum equation represents a balance of the streamwise advection, streamwise pressure gradient and viscous stress, while the streamline-normal equation is a balance between the streamline-normal pressure gradient and centripetal acceleration. In the turbulent boundary layer on the mid-hull, the curvature terms and streamwise pressure gradient are negligible and the results conform to traditional analysis of flat-plate boundary layers. In the thick stern boundary layer, the curvature and streamwise pressure gradient terms reappear to balance the turbulent and viscous stresses. This balance explains the characteristic variation of static pressure observed for thick boundary layers at the tails of axisymmetric bodies.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Visualization of the axisymmetric bare DARPA SUBOFF hull configuration. Favourable- pressure-gradient (FPG), zero-pressure-gradient (ZPG) and adverse-pressure-gradient (APG) regions are labelled.

Figure 1

Figure 2. (a) Comparison of the radial (green), wall-normal (blue) and streamline-normal (red) lines for the SUBOFF hull geometry along with the boundary layer edge (– – – –). Panels (b) and (c) show detailed views of the coordinate lines in the boundary layer at the front (b) and stern (c) of the hull.

Figure 2

Table 1. Non-zero Christoffel symbols for the metric tensor in (2.12).

Figure 3

Figure 3. Computational domain for simulation of the bare DARPA SUBOFF hull. The outer boundary of the hull grid is shown in red and the wake refinement grid boundary is in blue. The outer boundary of the background grid is in black, where boundary conditions are labelled.

Figure 4

Table 2. Details of the three grids, including the number of control volumes and the number of processors per grid.

Figure 5

Figure 4. Instantaneous isocontour of $Q$-criterion (Hunt et al.1988) coloured by instantaneous axial velocity are shown near the hull surface to visualize near-wall structures. The transition of the boundary layer is visible at the tripping location ($x/D = 0.75$).

Figure 6

Figure 5. Circumferentially averaged mean eddy viscosity normalized by the molecular viscosity around the hull.

Figure 7

Figure 6. Contours of (a) instantaneous velocity magnitude, (b) instantaneous vorticity magnitude, (c) mean streamwise velocity and (d) mean pressure coefficient. The black line designates the edge of the boundary layer and wake using the total pressure metric.

Figure 8

Figure 7. Profiles of (a) $C_p$ and (b) $C_f$ on the hull surface: ——, hull surface quantities; $\cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot$, $C_p$ along boundary layer edge; $\square$, experiments of Huang et al. (1992) at $Re = 1.2 \times 10^{7}$; – – – – (red), flat-plate ZPGTBL $C_f$ curve from Schlichting (1955). Note that the experimental $C_f$ data have been scaled to the $Re$ of the simulation using the scaling $C_f \sim Re^{-1/5}$.

Figure 9

Figure 8. Profiles of mean axial velocity normalized by edge velocity at stations $x/D = 3, 6, 9, 12, 15$ downstream of the stern: ——, present results; $\square$, experiments of Jiménez et al. (2010b).

Figure 10

Figure 9. Variation of (a) boundary layer thickness, (b) shape factor, (c) $Re_{\theta }$ and $Re_{\tau }$, and (d) the boundary layer edge (——) and wall ($\cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot \cdot$) Clauser pressure gradient parameters versus $x/L$ along the hull. Profiles are extracted along the streamline-normal coordinate direction from lines originating at the hull surface. The red symbols in panel (a) represent $\delta /D$ at intervals along the hull computed using the inviscid velocity method of Griffin et al. (2021).

Figure 11

Figure 10. (a) Left-hand (——) and right-hand ($\circ$) sides of (4.9) non-dimensionalized by $\rho U_{\infty }^{2}/{2}$, representing the difference between pressures at the wall and the edge of the boundary layer. (b) Pressure coefficient measured at the wall (——) compared to the right-hand side of (4.10) ($\circ$).

Figure 12

Figure 11. Contours of (a) $U_s/U_{\infty }$, (b) $C_p$, (c) $D/R_s$ and (d) $D/L_a$ along with streamlines over the front of the hull.

Figure 13

Figure 12. Contours of (a) total vorticity ($\varOmega$), (b) rotational vorticity ($\varOmega _{rot} = U_s/R_s$) and ($c$) shear vorticity ($\varOmega _{shear} = -\partial U_s / \partial n$) non-dimensionalized by $D/U_{\infty }$ along with streamlines over the front of the hull.

Figure 14

Figure 13. Streamline-normal lines (shades of red) along with boundary layer edge (black – – – –) and streamlines (grey) on the front of the hull (a) and zoomed in near the wall (b). Corresponding profiles of (c) mean streamwise velocity and (d) rotational vorticity, where dotted lines indicate locations outside of the boundary layer.

Figure 15

Figure 14. Profiles of the terms in the mean momentum equations for the third potential line in figure 13(a). (a) Terms in the streamwise momentum equation: $U_s ({\partial U_s}/{\partial s})$ (blue), $-({1}/{\rho })({\partial P}/{\partial s})$ (red) and $({1}/{r})({\partial }/{\partial n} )( r \nu ({\partial U_s}/{\partial n} ))$ (brown). (b) Terms in the streamwise-normal momentum equation: ${U_s^{2}}/{R_s}$ (blue) and $-({1}/{\rho } )({\partial P}/{\partial n})$ (red). All terms are non-dimensionalized using inner scales ($\nu /u_{\tau }^{3}$). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer using the total pressure metric.

Figure 16

Figure 15. Streamline-normal lines (shades of magenta) on the mid-hull originating from the hull surface at $x/D = 2.4$, 3.0, 3.6, 4.2, 4.8, 5.4, 6.0, along with boundary layer edge (black – – – –) using the total pressure metric (a). Note that the streamline-normal profiles are nearly vertical since $U_x \gg U_r$ over the mid-hull. Associated profiles of inner-scaled mean streamwise velocity (b) and streamwise (c), streamwise-normal (d) and $\theta$-direction (e) velocity fluctuations along with Reynolds shear stress (f) are compared to the DNS results of Jiménez et al. (2010a) for a planar TBL at $Re_{\theta } = 1551$. Velocity profiles for the log law and viscous sublayer (grey – – – –) are also shown in panel (b). Points outside of the boundary layer (based on the total pressure metric) are dotted lines.

Figure 17

Figure 16. Profiles of terms in the boundary layer equations for the streamline-normal line emanating from $x/D = 4.2$ on the hull surface (the fourth line from figure 15a). (a) Terms in the streamwise momentum equation: $U_s ({\partial U_s}/{\partial s})$ (blue), $-({1}/{\rho } )({\partial P}/{\partial s})$ (red), $-({1}/{r})({\partial }/{\partial n} )( r \overline {u_s u_n} )$ (green) and $({1}/{r})({\partial }/{\partial n}) ( r \nu ({\partial U_s}/{\partial n} ))$ (brown). ($b$) Terms in the streamwise-normal momentum equation: ${U_s^{2}}/{R_s}$ (blue), $-({1}/{\rho } )({\partial P}/{\partial n})$ (red) and $-({1}/{r})( {\partial }/{\partial n} )( r \overline {u_n^{2}} )$ (green). All terms are non-dimensionalized using inner scales ($\nu /u_{\tau }^{3}$). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer.

Figure 18

Figure 17. Contours of (a) instantaneous velocity magnitude, (b) $U_s/U_{\infty }$, (c) $C_p$, (d) non-dimensionalized streamwise pressure gradient, (e) $D/R_s$ and (f) $D/L_a$ along with streamlines. The bold line represents the edge of the boundary layer. The purple line in panel (e) marks the streamline curvature inflection line ($D/R_s = 0$) inside the boundary layer.

Figure 19

Figure 18. Evolution of the stern boundary layer plotted with streamwise-normal lines originating from the hull surface at $x/D = 6.6$, 7.2, 7.8, 8.4 (a). Also plotted are streamlines (grey, labelled I–IV) and the boundary layer edge (black – – – –). Associated profiles of inner- and outer-scaled mean streamwise velocity (b,c), streamwise (d), streamwise-normal (e) and $\theta$-direction (f) velocity fluctuations, and Reynolds stress (g) are plotted for each potential line. Velocity profiles for the log law and viscous sublayer (grey – – – –) are also shown in panel (b). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer using the total pressure metric.

Figure 20

Figure 19. Contours of (a) $\overline {u_s^{2}}$ and (b) $\overline {u_s u_n}$ non-dimensionalized by the free-stream velocity. Streamlines are shown in thin lines and the bold line represents the edge of the boundary layer.

Figure 21

Figure 20. Unwrapped streamline surfaces of revolution for streamline I labelled in figure 18(a). Contours of instantaneous streamwise velocity (a), streamwise velocity fluctuations (b), streamline-normal velocity (c) and instantaneous turbulent shear stress (d) are plotted versus $r\theta$ and $s$. Also plotted are lines of constant $\theta$ at intervals of ${\rm \pi} /4$ (- - - - - -) to highlight the convergence of the mean streamlines.

Figure 22

Figure 21. Profiles of terms in the mean momentum equations for the potential line emanating from $x/D = 7.2$ on the hull surface (the second potential line from figure 18a). (a) Terms in the streamwise momentum equation: $U_s ({\partial U_s}/{\partial s})$ (blue), $-({1}/{\rho } )({\partial P}/{\partial s})$ (red), $- ({1}/{r} )({\partial }/{\partial n}) ( r \overline {u_s u_n})$ (green) and $({1}/{r})({\partial U_s}/{\partial n }) ( r \nu ({\partial U_s}/{\partial n}) )$ (brown). (b) Terms in the streamwise-normal momentum equation: ${U_s^{2}}/{R_s}$ (blue), $-({1}/{\rho } )({\partial P}/{\partial n})$ (red) and $-({1}/{r} )({\partial }/{\partial n}) ( r \overline {u_n^{2}} )$ (green). (c) Also shown are non-leading-order terms from the streamwise momentum equation: $- {\partial \overline {u_s^{2}}}/{\partial s}$ (grey), $({\overline {u_s^{2}} - \overline {u_n^{2}}})/{L_a}$ (yellow), ${2 \overline {u_s u_n}}/{R_s}$ (orange) and $(\overline {u_{\theta }^{2}} - \overline {u_n^{2}} ) ({1}/{r} )({\partial r}/{\partial s})$ (purple). (d) Non-leading-order terms in the streamline-normal direction: ${\partial \overline {u_s u_n}}/{\partial s}$ (grey), ${2 \overline {u_s u_n}}/{L_a}$ (yellow), $({\overline {u_n^{2}} - \overline {u_s^{2}}})/{R_s}$ (orange), $\overline {u_s u_n} ({1}/{r} )({\partial r}/{\partial s})$ (purple), $\overline {u_{\theta }^{2}} ({1}/{r} )({\partial r}/{\partial n})$ (pink) and the viscous term (brown). All terms are non-dimensionalized using inner scales ($\nu /u_{\tau }^{3}$). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer.

Figure 23

Figure 22. Profiles of terms in the boundary layer equations for the potential line emanating from $x/D = 7.8$ on the hull surface (the third potential line from figure 18a). Terms in the streamwise momentum equation (a) follow the same colours as described in the caption for figure 21(a), as do terms in the streamwise-normal momentum equation (b) for figure 21(b). All terms are non-dimensionalized using inner scales ($\nu /u_{\tau }^{3}$). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer using the total pressure metric.

Figure 24

Figure 23. Profiles of terms in the boundary layer equations for the potential line emanating from $x/D = 8.4$ on the hull surface (the last potential line from figure 18a). Terms in the streamwise momentum equation (a) follow the same colours as described in the caption for figure 21(a), as do terms in the streamwise-normal momentum equation (b) for figure 21(b). All terms are non-dimensionalized using inner scales ($\nu /u_{\tau }^{3}$). Dotted lines represent points outside of the boundary layer.

Figure 25

Table 3. Non-zero Christoffel symbols for the metric tensor in (2.12) written in terms of physical components.