Computer Aided Grid Interface: An Interactive CFD Pre-Processor

NASA maintains an applications oriented computational fluid dynamics (CFD) efforts complementary to and in support of the aerodynamic-propulsion design and test activities. This is especially true at NASA/MSFC where the goal is to advance and optimize present and future liquid-fueled rocket engines. Numerical grid generation plays a significant role in the fluid flow simulations utilizing CFD. An overall goal of the current project was to develop a geometry-grid generation tool that will help engineers, scientists and CFD practitioners to analyze design problems involving complex geometries in a timely fashion. This goal is accomplished by developing the Computer Aided Grid Interface system (CAGI). The CAGI system is developed by integrating CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing) geometric system output and / or Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) files (including all the NASA-IGES entities), geometry manipulations and generations associated with grid constructions, and robust grid generation methodologies. This report describes the development process of the CAGI system

Boundary-Conforming Finite Element Methods for Twin-Screw Extruders using Spline-Based Parameterization Techniques

This paper presents a novel spline-based meshing technique that allows for usage of boundary-conforming meshes for unsteady flow and temperature simulations in co-rotating twin-screw extruders. Spline-based descriptions of arbitrary screw geometries are generated using Elliptic Grid Generation. They are evaluated in a number of discrete points to yield a coarse classical mesh. The use of a special control mapping allows to fine-tune properties of the coarse mesh like orthogonality at the boundaries. The coarse mesh is used as a 'scaffolding' to generate a boundary-conforming mesh out of a fine background mesh at run-time. Storing only a coarse mesh makes the method cheap in terms of memory storage. Additionally, the adaptation at run-time is extremely cheap compared to computing the flow solution. Furthermore, this method circumvents the need for expensive re-meshing and projections of solutions making it efficient and accurate. It is incorporated into a space-time finite element framework. We present time-dependent test cases of non-Newtonian fluids in 2D and 3D for complex screw designs. They demonstrate the potential of the method also for arbitrarily complex industrial applications

A NURBS-based Discontinuous Galerkin method for conservation laws with high-order moving meshes

International audienceThe objective of the present work is to develop a new numerical framework for simulations including moving bodies, in the specific context of high-order meshes consistent with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) representations. Thus, the proposed approach combines ideas from isogeometric analysis, able to handle exactly CAD-based geometries, and Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods with an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation , able to solve complex problems with moving grids. The resulting approach is a DG method based on rational Bézier elements, that can be easily constructed from Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS), formulated in a general ALE setting. We focus here on applications in compressible aerodynamics, but the method could be applied to other models. Two verification exercises are conducted, to assess rigorously the properties of the method and the convergence rates for representations up to sixth order. Finally, two problems are analysed in depth, involving compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations , for an oscillating cylinder and a pitching airfoil. In particular, the convergence of flow characteristics is investigated, as well as the impact of using curved boundaries in the context of deformable domains

Numerical simulation of fracture pattern development and implications for fuid flow

Simulations are instrumental to understanding flow through discrete fracture geometric representations that capture the large-scale permeability structure of fractured porous media. The contribution of this thesis is threefold: an efficient finite-element finite-volume discretisation of the advection/diffusion flow equations, a geomechanical fracture propagation algorithm to create fractured rock analogues, and a study of the effect of growth on hydraulic conductivity. We describe an iterative geomechanics-based finite-element model to simulate quasi-static crack propagation in a linear elastic matrix from an initial set of random flaws. The cornerstones are a failure and propagation criterion as well as a geometric kernel for dynamic shape housekeeping and automatic remeshing. Two-dimensional patterns exhibit connectivity, spacing, and density distributions reproducing en echelon crack linkage, tip hooking, and polygonal shrinkage forms. Differential stresses at the boundaries yield fracture curving. A stress field study shows that curvature can be suppressed by layer interaction effects. Our method is appropriate to model layered media where interaction with neighbouring layers does not dominate deformation. Geomechanically generated fracture patterns are the input to single-phase flow simulations through fractures and matrix. Thus, results are applicable to fractured porous media in addition to crystalline rocks. Stress state and deformation history control emergent local fracture apertures. Results depend on the number of initial flaws, their initial random distribution, and the permeability of the matrix. Straightpath fracture pattern simplifications yield a lower effective permeability in comparison to their curved counterparts. Fixed apertures overestimate the conductivity of the rock by up to six orders of magnitude. Local sample percolation effects are representative of the entire model flow behaviour for geomechanical apertures. Effective permeability in fracture dataset subregions are higher than the overall conductivity of the system. The presented methodology captures emerging patterns due to evolving geometric and flow properties essential to the realistic simulation of subsurface processes

Non-intrusive reduced order modelling for aerodynamic applications

During the design and optimisation of aerodynamic components, the simulations to be performed involve a large number of parameters related to the geometry and flow conditions. In this scenario, the simulation of all possible configurations is not af-fordable. To overcome this problem, the present work proposes a novel multi-output neural network (NN) for the prediction of aerodynamic coefficients of aerofoils and wings using compressible flow data. Contrary to existing NNs that are designed to predict aerodynamic quantities of interest, the proposed network considers as output the pressure or stresses at a number of selected points on the aerodynamic surface. The proposed approach is compared against the more traditional networks where the aero-dynamic coefficients are directly the outputs of the network. Furthermore, a detailed comparison of the proposed NN against the popular proper orthogonal decomposi-tion (POD) method is presented. The numerical results, involving high dimensional problems with flow and geometric parameters, show the benefits of the proposed ap-proach.The proposed NN is used to accelerate the evaluation of the objective function in an inverse aerodynamic shape design problem. The optimisation algorithm uses the gradient-free modified cuckoo search method. Applications in two and three dimen-sions are shown, demonstrating the potential of the proposed framework in the con-text of both optimisation and inverse design problems. The performance of the pro-posed optimisation framework is also compared against existing frameworks where the more traditional NNs are employed

Free Form Deformation Techniques for 3D Shape Optimization Problems

The purpose of this work is to analyse and study an efficient parametrization technique for a 3D shape optimization problem. After a brief review of the techniques and approaches already available in literature, we choose to use the Free Form Deformation parametrization, a recent technique which proved to be efficient and at the same time versatile, allowing to manage complex shapes even with few parameters. We tested and studied the technique by developing a link among different specialized softwares, in order to establish a path, from the geometry definition, to the method implementation, and finally to the simulation and to the optimization of the problem. In particular, we have studied a bulb and a rudder of a race sailing boat as model problems

Heat Transfer Mechanism In Particle-Laden Turbulent Shearless Flows

Particle-laden turbulent flows are one of the complex flow regimes involved in a wide range of environmental, industrial, biomedical and aeronautical applications. Recently the interest has included also the interaction between scalars and particles, and the complex scenario which arises from the interaction of particle finite inertia, temperature transport, and momentum and heat feedback of particles on the flow leads to a multi-scale and multi-physics phenomenon which is not yet fully understood. The present work aims to investigate the fluid-particle thermal interaction in turbulent mixing under one-way and two-way coupling regimes. A recent novel numerical framework has been used to investigate the impact of suspended sub-Kolmogorov inertial particles on heat transfer within the mixing layer which develops at the interface of two regions with different temperature in an isotropic turbulent flow. Temperature has been considered a passive scalar, advected by the solenoidal velocity field, and subject to the particle thermal feedback in the two-way regime. A self-similar stage always develops where all single-point statistics of the carrier fluid and the suspended particles collapse when properly re-scaled. We quantify the effect of particle inertial, parametrized through the Stokes and thermal Stokes numbers, on the heat transfer through the Nusselt number, defined as the ratio of the heat transfer to the thermal diffusion. A scale analysis will be presented. We show how the modulation of fluid temperature gradients due to the statistical alignments of the particle velocity and the local carrier flow temperature gradient field, impacts the overall heat transfer in the two-way coupling regime