CFD Workbench

FreeCAD-CFD Workbench
Tutorial 4: External aerodynamics of a UAV
CFD Workbench
WORKBENCH
This workbench aims to help users set up and run CFD analysis. It guides the user in selecting the relevant physics, specifying the
material properties, generating a mesh, assigning boundary conditions and setting the solver settings before running the
simulation. Where possible best practices are included to improve the stability of the solvers.

INSTALLATION

WINDOWS: LINUX:
● https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Download ● https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Install_on_Unix
● Install CfdOF from Tools | Addon manager ● Install CfdOF from Tools | Addon manager
● Go to Edit | Preferences | CFD to check and ● Install OpenFOAM (https://openfoam.com/download/)
install dependencies ● Install Paraview
● Go to Edit | Preferences | CFD to check dependencies and install cfMesh

LATEST INFORMATION
Please see the CfdOF README file for up-to-date information.

LEAD DEVELOPERS
Johan Heyns (CSIR, 2016-2018) [email protected],
Oliver Oxtoby (CSIR, 2016-2018) [email protected],
Alfred Bogaers (CSIR, 2016-2018) [email protected],
UAV aerodynamics
● To demonstrate how to model viscous flow over an
unmanned aerial vehicle.
● Study the effect of including the camera gimbal

CAD obtained from:

https://grabcad.com/library/uav-40
Created by Shadman Sakib
Non-commercial use permitted with attribution
Part Design
 1 2

Geometry
● Open the supplied .igs file in
FreeCAD
● We wish to remove the propeller
blades for the analysis.
● Open the ‘Draft’ workbench, select
the ‘UAV’ object in the tree view,
and click the ‘Explode’ button. 4
● Select and delete each face of the
propeller.
● Select all faces and click the ‘join’
button to re-combine them.

3


Geometry
● Save time by simulating only the x > 0
half of the symmetric domain -
therefore, we wish to cut away half the
geometry
● Open the ‘Part’ workbench and create a
cube
● Set its dimensions to surround the
geometry for x ⩽ 0
● To cut the aircraft geometry with the
cube, first select the ‘Compound’
object, then the ‘Cube’ object (holding
Ctrl), and choose the ‘Cut’ operation in
the Part workbench
○ The ‘Cut’ operation cuts away from the
first selection using the second (and
any further) selections
External flow domain
● Create another cube to hold the
external mesh.
● Set the position and dimensions as
shown.
● For the final analysis, the far field
domains should be much further
from the body
○ Rule of thumb is 10 times its
characteristic length
○ We choose closer boundaries for a
NOTE: Choosing
quicker preliminary analysis
operations that act on
● Join the surfaces together by surfaces rather than
selecting them in the tree view and solids allows us to
work with
choosing “Make compound” non-watertight CAD
such as in this
example
Mesh generation and mesh
refinement with cfMesh
Create Mesh object and
refinement region
● Activate the CfdOF Workbench
● Create an ‘Analysis’ object
● Select the ‘Compound001’ object and click
the ‘Mesh’ button.
● Select the cfMesh mesher and a base
element size of 0.1 m
● Select the mesh object and click the ‘Mesh
region’ button
Surface refinement region
● For 1/10th refinement within 0.1 m of the
body, input a refinement thickness of 0.1m
and a relative element size of 0.1.
● Here we choose 4 boundary layers with an
expansion ratio of 1.2.
○ See Tutorial 3 for more information on
boundary layers
○ For non-smooth geometries, the mesher
and/or solver may struggle if too many
boundary layers are added.
● To easily select the entire body of the
aircraft, click ‘Select from list’, then choose
the ‘Cut’ object and click ‘Select all’
Volume refinement region
● To achieve a more gradual refinement
from the far field to the surface of the
body, we introduce an additional volume
refinement
● Select the ‘Compound001_Mesh’ object
and click the ‘Mesh region’ button as
before
● Select ‘Internal volume’ and enter the
parameters as shown
○ cfMesh currently only supports spherical
and rectangular refinement zones
● Return to the mesh object and click
‘Mesh’.
● Click ‘Paraview’ to view the result.
CFD analysis
Add boundary conditions
● Create a CFD boundary condition of
‘Constraint’ type ‘Symmetry’ for the central
cutting face
● Create a ‘Uniform velocity’ inflow boundary
condition with the parameters shown
below and add the lower and front faces.
○ Flight at 74 km/h and 14° angle of attack
Add boundary conditions
● Create a slip wall boundary condition for
the outer face
● Create a ‘Static pressure’ outflow boundary
and add the upper and back faces.
● The remaining settings
include:
○ Fluid: air
○ Initialise with
potential flow
Run analysis
● For the ‘CfdSolver’ object, set parallel
processing to true and the desired number
of parallel cores
● Double click on the ‘CfdSolver’ object and
click Write, then Run.
Post-processing
Visualisation
● Click ‘Paraview’, go to last time step
● Re-load ‘pv.foam’, select different patches
to visualise if desired
● Add stream trace to object with
internalMesh selected
● Warning: For incompressible, single
phase solvers, OpenFOAM writes
‘Kinematic pressure’ = p/⍴
Integrated forces output runTimeModifiable true;

libs
● While the analysis is running, click ‘Edit’ to (
// Needed for availability of porous baffle boundary in
open the case directory and edit the potentialFoam
"libturbulenceModels.so"
system/controlDict file. );

● Paste the contents of the supplied ‘forces’ functions

{
file at the end. forces_all
{
● Integrated forces and moments (about type forces;
libs ( "libforces.so" );
‘CofR’) are written to the file: patches
(
postProcessing/forces_all/0/forces.dat wall
);
● Use to determine lift, drag, etc rho rhoInf;
rhoInf 1.2;
● Re-run analysis with and without camera log off;
writeControl timeStep;
gimbal, gear retracted, etc, and find effect writeInterval 1;
CofR ( 0 0 0 );
on forces }
}

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The End