Unsteady aerodynamics computation and investigation of magnus effect on computed trajectory of spinning projectile from subsonic to supersonic speeds

This paper describes the extensive numerical investigation carried out on a 203-mm spin-stabilised projectile to study the effects of Magnus force at high angles of attack on the stability and flight-trajectory parameters, for further validation and incorporation in a 6-DOF trajectory solver for flight-stability analysis. Magnus force typically influences the course of flight by causing the projectile to drift from its intended path in addition to generation of inbuilt dynamic instabilities in pitch and yaw orientation and is a function of AoA and spin rate. This study is a consolidation of the authors’ previous research on the same caliber projectile but with time-accurate analysis. It has been found that typically, the Magnus force and moment calculation requires time-accurate Navier Stokes equations to be solved numerically for accurate prediction(1,2). Hence, to complete the extraction of static and dynamic coefficients derivatives, unstructured time-accurate CFD analysis on multiple configurations, ranging from subsonic to supersonic Mach regimes, has been evaluated using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and found to be suitable for capturing the desired effects. However, the LES simulation requires non-dimensional wall distance (y+) of the order of 0.5 – 1, with LES_IQ > 75% thus, is computationally-intensive. In addition, to cover the entire flight envelope from Charge 1 (249 m/s) to Charge 7 (595 m/s), at spin rate from 500 rad/s to 750 rad/s, 30 cases have been evaluated to generate the time-accurate coefficient library for integration with 6-DOF solver analysis. The results obtained have been compared with the available experimental data and found to be in reasonable agreement. The results of 6-DOF solver, incorporating the extracted coefficients, were compared with firing-table results, which further validated the computational methodology. This study provides an insight on how opposite flow interacts with the attached boundary layer due to spin rate and generates a turbulent interacting flow with variation in vortical structures for Q-Criterion vortex-flow visualization.