Aircraft Simulations Using the New CFD Software from ONERA, DLR, and Airbus

Abstract

This paper presents a thorough comparison between RANS simulations performed with the computational fluid dynamics by ONERA, DLR, and Airbus (CODA) new-generation flow solver and reference legacy codes TAU (DLR) and elsA (ONERA) for high-speed cruising NASA Common Research Model (CRM) configurations that were considered in the context of the 5th, 6th, and 7th Drag Prediction Workshops. The solver’s accuracy is assessed with several meshing strategies, including block-structured, hybrid-structured/unstructured, and fully unstructured tetrahedral meshes. This solver features both a cell-centered finite-volume (FV) scheme suited to arbitrary meshes as well as a modern high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme. We show that for all cases considered, the FV component recovers an equivalent accuracy compared to elsA (cell-centered FV) on block-structured meshes and TAU (node-centered FV) on hybrid and unstructured meshes. The high-order DG scheme (third-order accurate) is found to significantly enhance the drag prediction on coarse meshes compared to legacy FV methods, both for structured and unstructured meshes.