Flow around a pair of 2D cylinders using a hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian solver

Abstract

The field of external aerodynamics encompasses various engineering disciplines with a significant impact on wind energy technology. Aerodynamic investigations provide insights not only into the characteristics of individual blades or standalone wind turbines but also into entire wind farms. As advancements in wind turbine design continue, understanding the interactions between turbines in close proximity becomes crucial, presenting a multi-body problem. Researchers require efficient and accurate tools to comprehensively study such dynamics. This paper presents a hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian solver designed to leverage the strengths of Eulerian solvers in resolving boundary layers and Lagrangian solvers in convecting wakes downstream without introducing significant numerical diffusion. The solver adeptly handles multi-body simulations, allowing the construction of independent Eulerian meshes that communicate seamlessly through Lagrangian particles. In this way, the computational study of multibody problems does not require very large and dense meshes. Validation in single-body cases has already been conducted, with this paper demonstrating the solver’s application to a pair of cylinders in different configurations. A comparative performance analysis is carried out against pure Eulerian solvers. The results highlight that the hybrid solver efficiently reproduces the accuracy of the Eulerian solver, demonstrating its effectiveness in handling complex aerodynamic simulations.