Extracting Rotor Induced & Profile Power From Cfd - A Proof-Of-Concept Study

Abstract

The present paper introduces a novel methodology to extract rotor induced and profile power from high-fidelity computational aerodynamics simulations. The methodology is based on partial pressure fields which split the static pressure of a numerical Navier-Stokes solution into equivalent Euler and dissipative partial pressure fields. Here the original formulation is extended and applied to rotating reference frames. Test cases include the two-bladed Knight & Hefner rotor in slow axial climb at variable blade collective as well as the ONERA HAD-1 propeller in axial flight. Quantitative comparisons of rotor power breakdown are conducted against results obtained from blade-element momentum theory. It is found that the novel methodology based on partial pressure fields gives promising results towards a complete near-field power breakdown of high-fidelity computational aerodynamics simulations of rotating systems.