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Subject: Re: FLOT: Aircraft applications
Author: Mark Flanagan
Date: 2001-01-29 16:15:00

I have used FLOTRAN for subsonic-transonic external flows over full aircraft
configurations. In my opinion, FLOTRAN is not well suited for this type of
application, especially for the higher transonic speeds. This is partially
because I am using tetrahedral elements over the configuration, which are
excessively stiff numerically, and causes convergence problems in the energy
equation in compressible flows. Transient calculations (for vortex
shedding) are not well suited for unstructured methods, anyway, but you will
pay a huge pre-processing burden up front for a structured mesh, and
financially for a structured solver. For low subsonic problems (M<~0.5) I
have been more impressed, but getting a true viscous grid to run in a well
behaved fashion on an external configuration is still an exercise. What
type of flow regime are you looking at? Are your configurations reasonably
simple, or do you have inlets and rotors in place? Aeroelastic
considerations? Your mileage may vary - FLOTRAN has been able to come up
with mostly reasonable answers (I think - tunnel tests are next month...),
and it's certainly easier to convince my management to get a reasonably
inexpensive add-on to an existing code, than pony up real money for a
research-level code.

-Mark Flanagan
Senior Analyst
Dynamic Engineering, Inc.
757 873 1344 x-387

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 3:10 PM
To: xansys

Has anyone been using Flotran for applications involving aircraft?
ie. Things like pressure distribution over the aircraft, or vortex shedding
of objects on the fuselage? Any success?

thanks,

Greg Horner
LEAP Australia Pty Ltd

Posts possibly associated with message #20604AuthorDateScore
20595FLOT: Aircraft applicationsGreg Horner greg@2001/01/29 
20604Re: FLOT: Aircraft applicationsMark Flanagan2001/01/29 
21047Re: FLOT: Aircraft applicationsGreg Horner greg@2001/02/13 
21059Re: FLOT: Aircraft applicationsMark Flanagan2001/02/14 
21078Re: FLOT: Aircraft applicationsGreg Horner greg@2001/02/14