Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Simulation of the flow field and far-field noise from an UAV propeller
Submission Author:
Filipe Dutra da Silva , SC
Co-Authors:
Filipe Dutra da Silva, Juan Pablo de Lima Costa Salazar, Julio Victor Vieira Martins Chadlvski
Presenter: Filipe Dutra da Silva
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0355
Abstract
Recent advances in electric propulsion and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design have drawn attention to the noise generated by propellers, owing to concerns with the increase of noise levels in urban areas and related adverse effects. In this scenario, numerical simulations can aid design towards quieter and aerodynamically efficient propellers. We propose an analysis and validation of a simulation model for predicting the flow and acoustic fields of propellers using the open source code OpenFOAM. A two-blade UAV propeller geometry of diameter equal to 0.24 m was chosen, from experiments conducted at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes simulations were conducted using the k − ω SST turbulence model for an isolated propeller configuration. The unstructured mesh is composed predominantly by tetrahedra, with the addition of layers of prismatic volumes in the vicinity of the propeller, in order to better resolve the boundary layer gradients. The acoustic field is obtained by using the Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings analogy, implemented in the OpenFOAM open source LibAcoustics library, and tests are reported regarding the sensitivity of the results to the shape and size of the control surfaces used by the method. Results are validated through comparisons with experimental data for the thrust and torque coefficients and for the far-field noise. In general, the numerical results show good agreement with experimental data regarding the aerodynamic coefficients and tonal noise level.
Keywords
Propeller noise, UAV noise, OpenFOAM
