High-Fidelity Analysis of Unsteady Flow Characteristics Around Vertiport Model
Alireza Maleki, Bilal Ahmed, Surabhi Singh, Vladimir V. Golubev
Abstract
This work investigates the unsteady flow characteristics around a wall-mounted rectangular cylinder, serving as a model for a building with a vertiport (e.g., a rooftop landing pad) for future analyses of eVTOL vehicle's vertiport unsteady interaction studies. A high-fidelity analysis involves Large Eddy Simulations (LES) conducted using an open-source OpenFOAM software, and further employs the Spectral Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (SPOD) approach to identify coherent vortical structures near the vertiport region, and their frequency content. The key findings include the identification of the near-wake vortex, the primary tip vortex, the von Karman vortex street, and the secondary tip vortex in the flow around the building. The conducted multiple-domain investigation provides insights into the spatial and temporal characteristics of these coherent structures. In particular, the secondary tip vortex dominates the rooftop region's flow dynamics and thus appears as the potentially primary contributor to the eVTOL vehicle's unsteady responses in the vertiport region.