REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

www.mod.gov.rs

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Material Resources Sector

Defensive Technologies Department

Military Technical Institute

www.vti.mod.gov.rs

COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF PROPELLER SLIPSTREAM AERODYNAMIC EFFECTS

JELENA SVORCAN

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia, jsvorcan@mas.bg.ac.rs

OGNJEN PEKOVIĆ

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia, opekovic@mas.bg.ac.rs

TONI IVANOV

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia, tivanov@mas.bg.ac.rs

MARIJA BALTIĆ

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia, mbaltic@mas.bg.ac.rs

Abstract: Numerical investigation of a representative (turboprop commuter) propeller slipstream aerodynamic effects on different nacelle/wing combinations is performed in a commercial software package ANSYS FLUENT. The obtained numerical results are compared to the experimental values of pressure coefficient obtained in a low speed wind tunnel investigation. The study is performed for two reasons: i) to gain more physical insight into the complex flow field that consequently appears, and ii) to evaluate the chosen software and test its abilities to adequately represent this unsteady, three-dimensional, rotational, interacting flow field. In the presented numerical study, flow field is computed by Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations closed by 2-equation k-ω SST turbulence model. Presented results include fluid flow visualizations in the form of pressure coefficient and vorticity contours and the values of aerodynamic coefficients.

Keywords: propeller, slipstream, aerodynamic performance, RANS.