Comparative Evaluation of the Immersed-Solid Method for Simulating the Flow Field around Hydrofoil

Abstract

The wall boundary is important in computational-fluid-dynamics simulations. If extremely small leakage, changing leakage or a moving body exists in the simulation case, the difficulty in meshing and solving near-wall flow increases. The immersed-solid method, which inserts a rigid, solid body into the entire fluid domain, was a choice to solve the wall-boundary-solution problems mentioned above, without considering mesh deformation. The purpose of this paper is to verify the effectiveness of the immersed-solid method in the simulation of extremely small leakage, changing leakage or a moving body, and to provide a theoretical basis for the use of the submerged-solid method in engineering. In this study, the NACA0015 hydrofoil was used to check the hydrodynamic characteristics in using the immersed-solid method. The comparative study was conducted at the incidence angle of 8 degrees and a Reynolds number of 5.0 × 105, by using the immersed-solid and traditional no-slip-wall boundary. The results show that the flow striking and separation with pressure rise and drop can be correctly captured using an immersed-solid setup with boundary tracking. However, the accuracy of pressure and velocity field using the immersed-solid method was insufficient. The turbulence-kinetic energy was much higher around the immersed-solid foil body. Generally, the immersed-solid method can qualitatively predict the correct hydrodynamic characteristics. Its convergence ability is better, and it can save approximately 20% of CPU time, even if the grid density is 4.39 times of the traditional no-slip wall. Therefore, the immersed-solid method can be a good choice for engineering-flow cases with complex wall problems.