Boundary layer control of flow separation for Micro Air Vehicles

Metacomp Technologies proposes to use a near-body fine mesh DNS sub-domain, coupled to a hybrid URANS/LES-type grid in the rest of the flowfield. Statistically-steady solutions will first be computed over a domain large enough to tolerate the imposition of ambient or freestream conditions at infinity. These solutions can be achieved rapidly, using conventional turbulence closures (possibly on a different mesh to that subsequently used for the transient simulation). A restricted sub-domain will then be created either by cutting or by a complete re-meshing of the region of interest, with the sub-domain mesh much more refined and with a strong emphasis on element isotropy as required by DNS. The truncated outer surfaces of the sub-domain mesh will be treated using special boundary conditions, which include self-tuning, far-field absorbing layer boundary conditions. There will also be the option of stochastically reconstructing any given statistical inlet information, in particular turbulent fluctuations which are obtained as a spatially-varying set of second-moments and length/time correlations from the given a priori URANS solution. The flexible wings of the MAV will be tightly coupled to an FSI tool, providing a robust grid deformation methodology which deforms the CFD mesh based on the deformation of the CSD grid. BENEFIT: Both military and civil applications are foreseeable: 1. Military application: Micro Aerial Vehicles, 2. Commercial application: Homeland security, law enforcement, and similar agencies where Micro Air Vehicles could be used for surveillance purposes.