CFD Modeling Tool for Dust Plume Dispersion from Ground Vehicle Systems

Modeling dust plume dynamic for short time (1-10s) and near field (50-100m) scales represents a challenge that needs to be overcome to support autonomous mobility of ground vehicles. The approach needs to capture dust emissions and plume dispersion with sufficient accuracy and fidelity to deliver realistic input for dust detection in the Environment Sensor Engine (ESE), a core tool in the Virtual Autonomous Navigation Environment (VANE). Both, VANE and ESE are modeling tools developed by ERDC to support development of autonomous ground vehicles. This work describes the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach using High Performance Computing Modernization Program resources along with field experiments that inform the input environmental conditions for model refinement and validation. More specifically, the purpose of the CFD model is to provide a tool that can be configured for diverse atmospheric and soil scenarios as well as vehicle (wheel-soil) emission rates to describe a realistic behavior of dust plume dynamics and concentrations useful for virtual sensor detection. In its current state, the CFD tool has been qualitatively compared against optical data, successfully representing plume behavior under different ambient conditions. Upcoming quantitative evaluations are in progress that will incorporate a network of small dust and meteorological monitoring sensors also supporting model improvement. Combining the sensor network with the optical sensors will enable 3D prognostic estimate of dust concentration for final validation purposes. Preliminary model validation results are presented.

PRESENTER

Hernandez, Jose L
Jose.L.Hernandez@usace.army.mil
865-292-4754

ERDC / GSL / MSB

CO-AUTHORS

Brent W. Towne
Brent.W.Towne@erdc.dren.mil

Gentry N. Berry
Gentry.N.Berry@erdc.dren.mil

CATEGORY

Computational Fluid Dynamics

SYSTEMS USED

Carpenter, Narwal, Gold, stportal,

SECRET

No