High-Order Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations of a Spinning Golf Ball

TL;DR

This paper introduces high-order CFD simulations of spinning golf balls at realistic conditions, capturing complex dimple flow dynamics and enabling rapid, GPU-accelerated analysis for sports ball design.

Contribution

It presents a novel high-order CFD method combined with overset grids and GPU acceleration for efficient, realistic golf ball simulations at moderate Reynolds numbers.

Findings

Captured complex flow inside golf ball dimples.

Achieved significant speedups using GPU-accelerated high-order CFD.

Demonstrated potential for CFD in sports ball design.

Abstract

This paper presents the first high-order computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of static and spinning golf balls at realistic flow conditions. The present results are shown to capture the complex fluid dynamics inside the dimples which lead to drag reduction versus a smooth sphere, and compare well to previous experimental and computational studies. The high--order Flux Reconstruction method has been paired with the Artificial Boundary overset method to enable simplified mesh generation and grid motion. The compressible Navier--Stokes equations are modeled using a scale--resolving Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach with no sub--grid models. The codes implementing these methods have been implemented for NVIDIA Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), enabling large speedups over traditional computer hardware. The new method allows for the simulation of golf balls, and other objects at similar moderate Reynolds numbers, to be simulated in a matter of days on large computing clusters. The use of CFD for the design of objects such as golf balls and other sports balls is now within reach.