Convergence of steady and unsteady formulations for inviscid hovering rotor solutions

An upwind Euler solver is presented, and applied to multibladed lifting hovering rotor flow. These flows can be simulated as a steady case, in a blade-fixed rotating co-ordinate system. However, forward flight simulation will always require an unsteady solution. Hence, as a stepping stone in the development of a forward flight simulation tool, both explicit steady and implicit unsteady simulations of the same hovering case are presented. Convergence of the two approaches is examined and compared, in terms of residual history, cost, and solution evolution, as a means of both validating the unsteady formulation and considering implications for forward flight simulation. Consideration of the solution evolution and wake capturing shows that for hovering rotor cases, the unsteady and steady solutions are the same, but the unsteady solution is more expensive in terms of CPU time. It is also shown that for hover, the fewer real time-steps taken per revolution the more efficient the implicit scheme is. However, this is a characteristic of the case, which results in smooth solution variation between time steps. It is also demonstrated that for rotary flow simulation, the global residual is not a useful quantity to assess convergence. The residual reaches a very low (constant in the implicit case) value while the solution is still evolving. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.