EFFECT OF COMPUTATIONAL DOMAIN SIZE ON AERODYNAMIC DRAG COEFFICIENT PREDICTION OF A SPIN-STABILIZED PROJECTILE

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics is widely used in industry applications and scientific researches. One of the most important requirements in simulating the
flow around a flying object is to choose a reasonable computational domain. This paper focuses on investigating the influence of computational domain size on
the simulation results of the aerodynamic drag acting on a spin-stabilized projectile. The research object is the 7.62mm M852 projectile. The computations were
performed on Ansys Fluent software using the Reynolds averaging method. The turbulence model SST k-ω is employed in the current study. The simulation
results were compared with experimental data to evaluate the influence of computational domain size. The research results have shown that the dimensions of
the computational domain significantly affect the simulation outcome. There exists a certain critical domain size at which the simulation results will remain
almost unchanged if the computational domain size continues to increase. It is recommended to employ the computational domain with dimensions of
5Lx10Lx5L to ensure reasonable accuracy and saving calculation time and computer resources. The conclusions obtained in the present study serve as the
guidance to select an appropriate computational domain size in the simulation of the flow around a spin-stabilized projectile to save computation time as well
as to obtain accurate results.