Numerical Analysis of Flow Over the NASA Common Research Model Using the Academic Computational Fluid Dynamics Code Galatea

Abstract

A recently developed academic computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, named Galatea, is used for the computational study of fully turbulent flow over the NASA common research model (CRM) in a wing-body configuration with and without horizontal tail. A brief description of code's methodology is included, while attention is mainly directed toward the accurate and efficient prediction of pressure distribution on wings' surfaces as well as of computation of lift and drag forces against different angles of attack, using an h-refinement approach and a parallel agglomeration multigrid scheme. The obtained numerical results compare close with both the experimental wind tunnel data and those of reference solvers.