Rotor/stator Interface Numerical Simulation Research On Propeller Slipstream

Aero-propulsion technology began to use jet engine many years ago. However propeller power still plays an important role in low to medium speed aircraft, as propeller power is accepted with low energy cost, high efficiency and low noise. Accordingly, propeller slipstream still attracts much attention.The research on propeller slipstream would help us to know the complex flow, also it gives guidance in the engineering of propeller aircraft design.Firstly, the development history and research status of propeller slipstream was introduced in this paper. Then the method to develop a solver based on stationary(inertial) coordinate frame was introduced, which contains spatial discretization, temporal discretization, boundary conditions, turbulence model and so on. After that, this paper introduces the method to develop the solver based on stationary coordinate frame into the solver based on rotating coordinate frame. Afterwards, three rotor/stator interface methods are under research, which are mixing plane, frozen rotor and sliding mesh. The rotor/stator interface method will partition the mesh into rotating domain, which contains rotating component, and static domain, which contains static component. Between rotating domain and static domain, using rotor/stator interface method to transmit flow information. Both mixing plane and frozen rotor are quasi-steady method, so the position between rotating part and static part is fixed and rotating domain is solved under the rotating coordinate frame. The mixing plane method transmits flow information by defining and updating the boundary conditions for the interface. The frozen rotor method transmits flow information by using interpolation method in the interface. Sliding mesh method is an unsteady computing method, which also transmits flow information by interpolation method. But the positional relation between rotating part and static part changes with the development of time.Finally, several cases were test in order to verify the correctness of both the rotor/stator interface method and the program. The result is satisfactory. It is concluded that the rotor/stator interface method would be a good choice to simulate the propeller slipstream.