Research Article Large Eddy Simulation of the Flow Past a Soccer Ball Sarmad Iftikhar, Salma Sherbaz , Hafiz Ali Haider Sehole , Adnan Maqsood , and Zartasha Mustansar Research Centre for Modeling & Simulation (RCMS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), H-12, Islamabad 4400, Pakistan Correspondence should be addressed to Adnan Maqsood; adnan@rcms.nust.edu.pk Received 31 July 2021; Revised 11 December 2021; Accepted 27 December 2021; Published 18 January 2022 Academic Editor: Hao Zhang Copyright © 2022 Sarmad Iftikhar et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. e football game is the most popular, played, and loved sport around the world. e advent of technological breakthroughs and the continuous increase in consumer demand have led to a revolution in football’s design and manufacturing process. In the past, studies in soccer ball aerodynamics mainly were limited to the investigation of lift and drag forces inside a wind tunnel apparatus. A few researchers have analyzed the flow around the different soccer balls using computational fluid dynamics simulations with the Reynolds-Averaged-Navier–Stokes equations model. is study primarily intends to simulate a modern soccer ball (Adidas Telstar 18) using the Large Eddy Simulations technique. e whole research is divided into two phases. In the first phase, the flow around a smooth sphere is simulated numerically to validate the meshing strategy, boundary conditions, and solution meth- odology. e same modeling approach is used in the later stage to simulate the flow around a soccer ball. e effect of panels and seam on the boundary layer flow separation and overall turbulent flow structure around the soccer ball are visualized. e results indicate that the large-eddy simulations help predict the flow intricacies by resolving small eddies near the panels. 1.Introduction ere has been a significant increase in the research studies utilizing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques in engineering design, optimization, structure analysis, and many other applications [1]. Several general-purpose CFD codes, such as OpenFoam, Fluent, CFX, X-FLOW, COMSOL, STAR-CCM+, etc., are used to perform such studies. For the past two decades, CFD has had a massive influence on sports stadia and equipment design [2–4]. It has played an essential role in understanding and improving the performance of various sports projectiles [5]. e previous research conducted in the area of soccer ball aerodynamics can be bifurcated into two main cate- gories. e first category mainly covers the aerodynamic performance assessment of different soccer balls using wind tunnel testing and CFD methods. e other type deals with the research related to the soccer ball trajectory analysis. A brief overview of the latest experimental and numerical research studies dealing with the soccer ball performance assessment is given in the subsequent paragraphs. Carr´ e et al. [6] used wind tunnel measurements to study how the transition of the boundary layers from laminar to turbulent altered the drag coefficient of a soccer ball at a high Reynolds number. e reverse Magnus effects were noticed for spinning balls at low Reynolds numbers. Asai et al. [7, 8] performed wind tunnel experimentation to compare the aerodynamic coefficients of the soccer balls under static and rotating conditions. e vortex dynamics during the balls’ flight were analyzed using the titanium tetrachloride visu- alization method. Visualization experiments for a nonro- tating ball revealed that the boundary-layer separation point is approximately 90 ° at a slow-kick—induced at a speed of 5 m/s—and approximately 120 ° during a fast kick—induced at a speed of 29 m/s. e experimental study conducted by Oggiano and Sætran [9] focused on measuring different soccer balls’ drag and side forces in static and spinning conditions. Free kick simulations were also performed by implementing the experimental data in a Matlab ® routine. It was concluded that the panel shapes, panel numbers, surface dimples, and different seams carry substantial implications for the flight trajectories of the other soccer balls. Passmore Hindawi Mathematical Problems in Engineering Volume 2022, Article ID 3455235, 13 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/3455235