Exploring epistemic quantification uncertainty in turbulent flow for multi-element aerofoils

Project details

• Student: Zhenting Kong
• Programme: Second-year BEng Mechanical Engineering
• Scheme: Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)
• Period: Summer 2022
• Supervisor: Omid Bidar

Overview

This project explored epistemic uncertainty in Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) predictions for single- and multi-element aerofoils. Zhenting used the open-source SU2 computational fluid dynamics suite and its EQUiPS uncertainty-quantification capability to generate uncertainty bounds using eigenspace perturbations of the turbulence model.

The study compared an S809 single-element aerofoil with the MDA30P3ON multi-element configuration across several angles of attack. Simulations were run on the University of Sheffield’s ShARC high-performance computing system, with ParaView and MATLAB used for post-processing and analysis.

Key outcomes

• Uncertainty increased substantially at higher angles of attack, where flow separation and other complex physics become more important.
• At lower angles of attack, the perturbed RANS predictions produced much narrower uncertainty bounds.
• Regions of high predictive uncertainty were identified as candidate locations for informative sensor placement.
• The project produced simulation data and analysis that contributed to further research on turbulence-model uncertainty and data assimilation.