FURI | Spring 2018

Using CFD Tools to Determine Aerodynamic Forces and Moments of Floating Objects in Engineering Applications

Many engineering applications involve the interaction between a fluid flow and a moving body, such as an airplane or a frisbee. Numerical simulations using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers can assist the analysis of such interactions and quantify lift, drag and aerodynamic moment. This project uses Ansys Fluent to simulate a 3-D flow passing a frisbee-like object with varying angles of attack. The dependence of the simulated lift and drag on mesh resolution is systematically investigated. These procedures can be used in future flow analysis to produce efficient engineering designs.