Numerical investigation of aero-optical effects around the turret based on delayed detached eddy simulation and unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes

Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) and Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS), based on the two-equation Shear Stress Transport (SST) model, are implemented to investigate the flow features and the aero-optical distortions around the turret. The Mach number is Ma = 0.4 and the Reynolds number is Re = 1.43 × 10 6 . Instantaneous and time-averaged flow fields are presented to compare the ability of DDES and URANS in predicting the flow features. The instantaneous results show that DDES can resolve the abundant flow structures and more disordered density distributions than URANS. The time-averaged pressure coefficient and the density distribution of both methods are generally similar, but the time-averaged turbulent kinetic energy of URANS is far higher than that of DDES. The time-averaged pressure coefficient of DDES is closer to experimental data. In the windward view, typical surface flow features of DDES and URANS are similar. In the leeward view, there are remarkable differences of typical flow features between DDES and URANS. At the six angles of elevation, 60°, 76°, 90°, 103°, 120°, and 132°, the spatial-temporal wavefront distortions are calculated and discussed with the geometric ray-tracing method and the Zernike polynomial fitting, respectively. In spatial distribution, the wavefront distortions of DDES and URANS are slightly different from the experimental data. At the angles of 60°, 76°, 90°, and 103°, the tendencies of wavefront distortion of DDES at different tracing distances are the same with that of URANS, which is due to the same ability of two methods to resolve the density distributions in the attached flow region. However, the results of DDES agree well with the experimental results at the angles of 120° and 132°, which is bigger than the results of URANS. For temporal characteristics, the frequencies of wavefront distortions of DDES are obviously higher than that of URANS. The amplitudes of wavefront distortions by DDES are about 3 to 5 times higher than that by URANS. At the cases of two different FLHs at Ma = 0.4, the flow structures are totally similar, and the tendencies of wavefront distortion with θ are also similar. At the cases of three Mach number, the compression has a big influence on the wavefront distortion.