10.2.0.3 Airflow around a rotating helicopter propeller.

In this example, we perform an airflow simulation around an helicopter propeller. The flow is governed by the classical compressible Euler equations of the fluid dynamics. We consider that the propeller turns with a constant angular velocity $\theta = 2\pi/10 rad.s^{-1}$, i.e. thus making 10 full rotations per second. In this simulation, one mesh is generated at each time step dt = $1e-4$ seconds, thus 1000 meshes are needed to achieve a complete revolution.

Figure 8: Propeller in rotation: cut though the tetrahedra after $1$, $45$, $99$, $100$, $145$ and $500$ rotations.

Figure 9: Propeller in rotation: streamlines.

back to the content