Tutorial 13: Turbulent Flow over a

NACA Airfoil - CITM Turbulence Model

Table of Contents
Introduction and Problem Definition ....................................................................................... 1
Turbulence Model ............................................................................................................... 2
Solution ............................................................................................................................. 3
Postprocessing .................................................................................................................... 6
References ........................................................................................................................ 10
Copyrights ........................................................................................................................ 10

QuickerSim CFD Toolbox for MATLAB Tutorial

http://www.quickersim.com/cfd-toolbox-for-matlab/index.

This tutorial is intended for the full version of the toolbox.

Introduction and Problem Definition

This tutorial is a continuation of Tutorial 12 and it will be assumed that you are familiar with concepts
described in the previous tutorial. Here, we are going to simulate turbulent flow around a NACA-0012
airfoil and introduce a yet another turbulence model referred to as Constant Intensity Turbulence Model
(CITM), which is developed as a hybrid model which uses Van-Driest model close to the wall and in the
freestream it assumes turbulence with a predefined intensity and length scale. Thus, it leaves the user space
to adjust it carefully to his case.

Geometry of the computational domain is shown below along with the ids of Physical Lines. We will
simulate flow at an angle of attack of 5 degrees and Reynolds number of 50 000 based on airfoil chord.

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CITM Turbulence Model

Turbulence Model
CITM (Constant Intensity Turbulence Model) is a model which combines the well known Van-Driest
model (refer to Tutorial 12 for details and an example) and the idea of the VL (Chen-Xu) turbulence model
used for HVAC applications (see reference [1]). Let us remind a couple of formulae from turbulence theory
and modelling. The turbulence model determines turbulent viscosity by

Turbulent kinetic energy can be defined by means of turbulence intensity and flow velocity as

Futhermore, knowing the turbulent length scale one can determine dissipation of turbulent kinetic
energy as

Combining the above equations yields the following formula for turbulent viscosity

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 Tutorial 13: Turbulent Flow
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CITM Turbulence Model

The CITM model uses distance to the closest wall as the turbulent length scale or the 'Ltmax' parameter
specified by the user, if distance to the closest wall is greater than 'Ltmax'. This manifests the fact that
turbulent length scale should not grow unbounded in freestream. In the boundary layer the CITM model
uses a blending function to switch from the assumption of constant turbulence intensity and length scale
to Van-Driest model which proved to be appropriate in proximity of walls. The Van-Driest model used
close to the wall is defined by:

with

where , , stands for wall distance and

where is the friction velocity defined as

Solution
In this section we provide the script which simulates turbulent flow around a NACA-0012 airfoil. Majority
of description is provided in comments to the source code - details of subsequent functions can be found
in documentation.

clc;
clear;

% Read and display mesh

[p,e,t] = importMeshGmsh('naca0012.msh');

% Add boundary layer mesh (refer to Tutorial 5 for boundary layer

meshing)
layers.h1 = 0.001;
layers.q = 1.3;
layers.n = 5;
wallIds = [9];
[p,e,t] = extrudeLayers2D(p,e,t,wallIds,layers);

% Convert mesh to second order and display mesh

[p,e,t,nVnodes,nPnodes,indices] = convertMeshToSecondOrder(p,e,t);
displayMesh2D(p,t);

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% Define fluid (air kinematic viscosity in m^2/s)

nu = 1.5e-5;

% Init solution, define convergence and under-relaxation parameters

[u, convergence] = initSolution(p,t,[0 0],0);
maxres = 1e-3;
maxiter = 40;
alpha = 0.6;

% Compute wall distance and duplicate velocity vector

d = computeWallDistance(p,e,t,wallIds);
us = u;

% Define inlet velocity profile

vinf = 0.75; % 0.75 m/s yields Re = 50 000 at airfoil chord of 1 m.
aoa = 5; % angle of attack in degrees
aoa = aoa/180*pi; % calculate angle of attack in radians
vel = vinf*[cos(aoa) sin(aoa)]; % define velocity vector

% Iterate nonlinear terms

for iter = 1:maxiter
% Compute turbulent viscosity (turbulent intensity of 4% and Lt =
0.5m)
nut = turbulentViscosity(p,t,u,d,nu,indices,'CITM', 0.04, 0.5);

% Under-relax velocity and assemble matrix and right hand side

u = alpha*u+(1-alpha)*us;
[NS, F] = assembleNavierStokesMatrix2D(p,e,t,nu
+nut,u(indices.indu),u(indices.indv),'supgDoublyAsymptotic');

% Apply boundary conditions

[NS, F] = imposeCfdBoundaryCondition2D(p,e,t,NS,F,7,'inlet', vel);
[NS, F] = imposeCfdBoundaryCondition2D(p,e,t,NS,F,9,'wall');

% Compute and plot residuals

[stop, convergence] =
computeResiduals(NS,F,u,size(p),convergence,maxres);
plotResiduals(convergence,2);

% Break if solution converged

if(stop)
break;
end

% Solve equations
us = u;
u = NS\F;
end

0 6.6408 0.5810 0

1.0000 2.6566 0.2381 0.0000

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2.0000 1.0628 0.0980 0.0000

3.0000 0.4252 0.0396 0.0000

4.0000 0.1701 0.0160 0.0000

5.0000 0.0680 0.0064 0.0000

6.0000 0.0272 0.0026 0.0000

7.0000 0.0109 0.0010 0.0000

8.0000 0.0044 0.0004 0.0000

9.0000 0.0017 0.0002 0.0000

10.0000 0.0007 0.0001 0.0000

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CITM Turbulence Model

Postprocessing
% Display x-velocity field
figure(3)
displaySolution2D(p,t,u(indices.indu),'x-velocity');

% Display pressure coefficient field

pressure = generatePressureData(u,p,t);

% Define Cp = 1 at the stagnation point (find maximum pressure value

on
% airfoil surface)
airfoilNodes = extractNodeIdsOnEdges(e,9);
pmax = max(pressure(airfoilNodes));

% Compute pressure coefficient and display it

Cp = (pressure-pmax+0.5*norm(vel)^2)/(0.5*norm(vel)^2);
figure(4);
displaySolution2D(p,t,Cp,'Cp [-]');

% Plot distribution of pressure coefficient on airfoil surface

figure(5)
scatter(p(1,airfoilNodes),-Cp(airfoilNodes));
xlabel('x/c [-]');
ylabel('-Cp [-]');

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title('Pressure coefficient distribution');
grid on;

% Compute lift and drag force coefficients

% Compute force at the airfoil (Physical Line id = 9)

Force = computeForce(p,e,t,u,nu,9);

% Project the force to direction tangential and perpendicular to

freestream
% velocity (drag and lift)
D = Force*[cos(aoa) sin(aoa)]';
L = Force*[-sin(aoa) cos(aoa)]';

% Compute drag and lift coeeficients by dividing the force by dynamic

% pressure (unit fluid density is assumed for incompressible flow
% formulation)
Cd = D/(0.5*norm(vel)^2)
Cl = L/(0.5*norm(vel)^2)

Cd =

0.0633

Cl =

0.4795

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Tutorial 13: Turbulent Flow
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CITM Turbulence Model

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 Tutorial 13: Turbulent Flow
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CITM Turbulence Model

Below we show the pressure coefficient and velocity field in close surrounding of the airfoil.

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 Tutorial 13: Turbulent Flow
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References
[1] Q. Chen, W. Xu, "A zero-equation turbulence model for indoor airflow simulation", Energy and Build-
ings 28 (1998) 137-144.

Copyrights
All rigths reserved for QuickerSim Ltd.

Published with MATLAB R2015b

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