A semi-structured approach to curvilinear mesh generation around streamlined bodies

We present an approach for robust high-order mesh generation specially tailored to streamlined bodies. The method is based on a semi-sructured approach which combines the high quality of structured meshes in the near-field with the flexibility of unstructured meshes in the far-field. We utilise medial axis technology to robustly partition the near-field into blocks which can be meshed coarsely with a linear swept mesher. A high-order mesh of the near-field is then generated and split using an isoparametric approach which allows us to obtain highly stretched elements aligned with the flow field. Special treatment of the partition is performed on the wing root juntion and the trailing edge --- into the wake --- to obtain an H-type mesh configuration with anisotropic hexahedra ideal for the strong shear of high Reynolds number simulations. We then proceed to discretise the far-field using traditional robust tetrahedral meshing tools. This workflow is made possible by two sets of tools: CADfix, focused on CAD system, the block partitioning of the near-field and the generation of a linear mesh; and NekMesh, focused on the curving of the high-order mesh and the generation of highly-stretched boundary layer elements. We demonstrate this approach on a NACA0012 wing attached to a wall and show that a gap between the wake partition and the wall can be inserted to remove the dependency of the partitioning procedure on the local geometry.Comment: Preprint accepted to the 2019 AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meetin

Emerging CFD technologies and aerospace vehicle design

With the recent focus on the needs of design and applications CFD, research groups have begun to address the traditional bottlenecks of grid generation and surface modeling. Now, a host of emerging technologies promise to shortcut or dramatically simplify the simulation process. This paper discusses the current status of these emerging technologies. It will argue that some tools are already available which can have positive impact on portions of the design cycle. However, in most cases, these tools need to be integrated into specific engineering systems and process cycles to be used effectively. The rapidly maturing status of unstructured and Cartesian approaches for inviscid simulations makes suggests the possibility of highly automated Euler-boundary layer simulations with application to loads estimation and even preliminary design. Similarly, technology is available to link block structured mesh generation algorithms with topology libraries to avoid tedious re-meshing of topologically similar configurations. Work in algorithmic based auto-blocking suggests that domain decomposition and point placement operations in multi-block mesh generation may be properly posed as problems in Computational Geometry, and following this approach may lead to robust algorithmic processes for automatic mesh generation

Mesh adaptation for high-order flow simulations

Mesh adaptation has only been considered for high-order flow simulations in recent years and many techniques are still to be made more robust and efficient with curvilinear meshes required by these high-order methods. This thesis covers the developments made to improve the mesh generation and adaptation capabilities of the open-source spectral/hp element framework Nektar++ and its dedicated mesh utility NekMesh. This thesis first covers the generation of quality initial meshes typically required before an iterative adaptation procedure can be used. For optimal performance of the spectral/hp element method, quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes are preferred and two methods are presented to achieve this, either entirely or partially. The first method, inspired from cross field methods, solves a Laplace problem to obtain a guiding field from which a valid two-dimensional quadrilateral block decomposition can be automatically obtained. In turn, naturally curved meshes are generated. The second method takes advantage of the medial axis to generate structured partitions in the boundary layer region of three-dimensional domains. The method proves to be robust in generating hybrid high-order meshes with boundary layer aligned prismatic elements near boundaries and tetrahedral elements elsewhere. The thesis goes on to explore the adaptation of high-order meshes for the simulation of flows using a spectral/hp element formulation. First a new approach to moving meshes, referred to here as r-adaptation, based on a variational framework, is described. This new r-adaptation module is then enhanced by p-adaptation for the simulation of compressible inviscid flows with shocks. Where the flow is smooth, p-adaptation is used to benefit from the spectral convergence of the spectral/hp element methods. Where the flow is discontinuous, e.g. at shock waves, r-adaptation clusters nodes together to better capture these field discontinuities. The benefits of this dual, rp-adaptation approach are demonstrated through two-dimensional benchmark test cases.Open Acces

Unstructured Mesh Generation and Adaptation

International audienceWe first describe the well established unstructured mesh generation methods as involved in the computational pipeline, from geometry definition to surface and volume mesh generation. These components are always a preliminary and required step to any numerical computations. From an historical point of view, the generation of fully unstructured mesh generation in 3D has been a real challenge so as to the design of robust and accurate second order schemes on such unstructured meshes. If the issue of generating volume meshes for geometries of any complexity is now mostly solved, the emergence of robust numerical schemes on unstructured meshes has paved the way to adaptivity. Indeed, unstructured meshes in contrast with structured or block structured grids have the necessary flexibility to control the discretization both in size and orientation. In the second part, we review the main components to perform adaptative computations: (i) anisotropic mesh prescription via a metric field tensor (ii) anisotropic error estimates, and (iii) anisotropic mesh generation. For each component, we focus on a particularly simple method to implement. In particular, we describe a simple but robust strategy for generating anisotropic meshes. Each adaptation entity, ie surface, volume or boundary layers, relies on a specific metric tensor field. The metric-based surface estimate is then used to control the deviation to the surface and to adapt the surface mesh. The volume estimate aims at controlling the interpolation error of a specific field of the flow. Several 3D examples issued from steady and unsteady simulations from systems of hyper-bolic laws are presented. In particular, we show that despite the simplicity of the introduced adaptive meshing scheme a high level of anisotropy can be reached. This includes the direct prediction of the sonic boom of an aircraft by computing the flow from the cruise altitude to the ground, the interaction between shock waves and boundary layer, or the prediction of complex unsteady phenomena in 3D

A simplex cut-cell adaptive method for high-order discretizations of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-175).While an indispensable tool in analysis and design applications, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is still plagued by insufficient automation and robustness in the geometry-to-solution process. This thesis presents two ideas for improving automation and robustness in CFD: output-based mesh adaptation for high-order discretizations and simplex, cut-cell mesh generation. First, output-based mesh adaptation consists of generating a sequence of meshes in an automated fashion with the goal of minimizing an estimate of the error in an engineering output. This technique is proposed as an alternative to current CFD practices in which error estimation and mesh generation are largely performed by experienced practitioners. Second, cut-cell mesh generation is a potentially more automated and robust technique compared to boundary-conforming mesh generation for complex, curved geometries. Cut-cell meshes are obtained by cutting a given geometry of interest out of a background mesh that need not conform to the geometry boundary. Specifically, this thesis develops the idea of simplex cut cells, in which the background mesh consists of triangles or tetrahedra that can be stretched in arbitrary directions to efficiently resolve boundary-layer and wake features.(cont.) The compressible Navier-Stokes equations in both two and three dimensions are discretized using the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method. An anisotropic h-adaptation technique is presented for high-order (p > 1) discretizations, driven by an output-error estimate obtained from the solution of an adjoint problem. In two and three dimensions, algorithms are presented for intersecting the geometry with the background mesh and for constructing the resulting cut cells. In addition, a quadrature technique is proposed for accurately integrating high-order functions on arbitrarily-shaped cut cells and cut faces. Accuracy on cut-cell meshes is demonstrated by comparing solutions to those on standard, boundary-conforming meshes. In two dimensions, robustness of the cut-cell, adaptive technique is successfully tested for highly-anisotropic boundary-layer meshes representative of practical high-Re simulations. In three dimensions, robustness of cut cells is demonstrated for various representative curved geometries. Adaptation results show that for all test cases considered, p = 2 and p = 3 discretizations meet desired error tolerances using fewer degrees of freedom than p = 1.Krzysztof Jakub Fidkowski.Ph.D