CFD-RANS model validation of turbulent flow: A case study on MAAT airship

Abstract

The Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) has a wide application in aerodynamic design of airship. In CFD simulations, a turbulence model plays a significantly important role in accuracy and resource cost. In this paper, a configuration of MAAT airship was investigated with different turbulence models under various angles of attack. Three most widely used turbulence models, Standard Spalart-Almaras, Realizable k-ε and SST k-ω, were tested and compared. The resource consumption study was based on the benchmark of 3000 iterations. According to the results, it is proved that Spallart-Allmaras model is the best model for steady-state airship simulation.