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Near field problems in three-dimensional panel methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

J. A. H. Petrie*
Affiliation:
British Aerospace and University of Leeds Aircraft Group, Kingston-Brough Division

Extract

A serious disadvantage of using a lattice of vortex rings to model a surface of vorticity, is that points close to the lattice surface may see large ‘holes’ in what from a larger distance appears as a smooth vorticity distribution. This failing is particularly important when two surfaces approach each other, such as occurs at the trailing edge of a wing, or when a free vortex passes near to a solid boundary. In these cases the error in induced velocity can adversely affect the overall flow computation. A relaxation process to find the force-free position of a free vortex close to a surface would obviously fail, for example. The obvious way of overcoming this problem is to improve the accuracy of the vorticity model whenever a point draws critically near to the vortex lattice.

Maskew suggested a way of overcoming this problem in two dimensions and his ideas have been extended in this note to three dimensions.

Type
Technical Note
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1979 

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References

1. Maskew, B. A subvortex technique for the close approach to a discretized vortex sheet. Paper presented at the Euromech Colloqiurn 75, 10th–13th May 1976.Google Scholar
2. Maskew, B. Numerical lifting surface methods for calculating the potential flow about wings and wing-bodies or arbitrary geometry. Loughborough University Doctoral Thesis, 1972.Google Scholar
3. Petrie, J. A. H. A surface source and vorticity panel method. Submitted to the Aeronautical Quarterly. Google Scholar