Large-Scale Simulation of Full Three-Dimensional Flow and Combustion of an Aero-Turbofan Engine on Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputer

Computational fluid dynamics- (CFD-) based component-level numerical simulation technology has been widely used in the design of aeroengines. However, due to the strong coupling effects between components, the numerical simulation of the whole engine considering the full three-dimensional flow and multi-component chemical reaction is still very difficult at present. Aimed at this problem, an efficient implicit solver, 'sprayDyMFoam' for an unstructured mesh, is developed in this paper based on the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer. This sprayDyMFoam solver improves the PIMPLE algorithm in the solution of aerodynamic force and adjusts the existing droplet atomization model in the solution of the combustion process so as to meet the matching situation between components and the combustion chamber in the solution process. Meanwhile, the parallel communication mechanism of AMI boundary processing is optimized based on the hardware environment of the Sunway supercomputer. The sprayDyMFoam solver is used to simulate a typical double-rotor turbofan engine: the calculation capacity and efficiency meet the use requirements, and the obtained compressor performance can form a good match with the test. The research proposed in this paper has strong application value in high-confidence computing, complex phenomenon capturing, and time and cost reduction for aeroengine development.

Automated summary

This paper presents the development of an efficient implicit solver, "sprayDyMFoam," based on the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer for the whole-engine numerical simulation of aeroengines. The solver improves the PIMPLE algorithm in the solution of aerodynamic force and adjusts the droplet atomization model for the combustion process to ensure the matching between components and the combustion chamber. The parallel communication mechanism for AMI boundary processing is also optimized. The sprayDyMFoam solver shows good computational capacity and efficiency in simulating a typical double-rotor turbofan engine.