Application and verification of internal boundary conditions for antenna mast wake predictions

It has been shown through wind tunnel tests that “small” geometric features such as antennas and masts can influence the mean and turbulent wake signature behind large naval vessels. Modeling these geometric features using standard computational fluid dynamics techniques requires wrapping either structured or unstructured computational grids around these very complicated structures. This is a very costly approach for many reasons. As an alternative, internal boundary conditions have been developed with the intention of capturing at least the first-order effects of the presence of the masts and antennas. A test case using a generic naval vessel mast was developed. A wind tunnel model of the antenna mast geometry was created and hot-wire anemometry data were collected. The CFD predictions were shown to compare well with the wind tunnel data for the parameters of concern.