A Navier-Stokes simulation of the MIT flapping foil experiment is presented. The MIT experiment was designed to provide a good quality database for unsteady boundary layer flows. The unsteady boundary layer around a hydrofoil was generated by flapping two airfoils upstream of the hydrofoil. Present Navier-Stokes simulation is carried out on the entire experimental domain, including the flapping airfoils as well as the downstream fixed hydrofoil. Present Navier-Stokes code uses an unstructured finite volume method based on the SIMPLE algorithm. It uses QUICK scheme for the convective terms and the second order Euler backward differencing for time derivatives to keep second order accuracy spatially and temporally. All other spatial derivatives are approximated by using central difference scheme. All comparisons of present time averaged and unsteady solutions with the corresponding experimental data are satisfactory: all unsteady solutions are compared in terms of time mean and first harmonic. The first harmonic of the velocity shows a peak inside the boundary layer along the surfaces of the hydrofoil and has a local minimum near the edge of the boundary layer. The local minimum becomes manifest as the boundary layer grows. The unsteadiness in the free stream is transferred inside the boundary layer when an unsteady vortex impinges on the surface. The entrained unsteadiness travels with a local velocity slower than that in the free stream. This causes phase lag of the first harmonic between the free stream and the boundary layer and local minimum of the first harmonic near the edge of the boundary layer.
An iterative near-boundary reconstruction strategy for unstructured finite volume method
