Mesh adaptation for simulation of unsteady flow with moving immersed boundaries

In this work, an approach for performing mesh adaptation in the numerical simulation of two‐dimensional unsteady flow with moving immersed boundaries is presented. In each adaptation period, the mesh is refined in the regions where the solution evolves or the moving bodies pass and is unrefined in the regions where the phenomena or the bodies deviate. The flow field and the fluid–solid interface are recomputed on the adapted mesh. The adaptation indicator is defined according to the magnitude of the vorticity in the flow field. There is no lag between the adapted mesh and the computed solution, and the adaptation frequency can be controlled to reduce the errors due to the solution transferring between the old mesh and the new one. The preservation of conservation property is mandatory in long‐time scale simulations, so a P1‐conservative interpolation is used in the solution transferring. A nonboundary‐conforming method is employed to solve the flow equations. Therefore, the moving‐boundary flows can be simulated on a fixed mesh, and there is no need to update the mesh at each time step to follow the motion or the deformation of the solid boundary. To validate the present mesh adaptation method, we have simulated several unsteady flows over a circular cylinder stationary or with forced oscillation, a single self‐propelled swimming fish, and two fish swimming in the same or different directions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A parallel unstructured dynamic mesh adaptation algorithm for 3‐D unsteady flows

An unstructured dynamic mesh adaptation and load balancing algorithm has been developed for the efficient simulation of three‐dimensional unsteady inviscid flows on parallel machines. The numerical scheme was based on a cell‐centred finite‐volume method and the Roe's flux‐difference splitting. Second‐order accuracy was achieved in time by using an implicit Jacobi/Gauss–Seidel iteration. The resolution of time‐dependent solutions was enhanced by adopting an h‐refinement/coarsening algorithm. Parallelization and load balancing were concurrently achieved on the adaptive dynamic meshes for computational speed‐up and efficient memory redistribution. A new tree data structure for boundary faces was developed for the continuous transfer of the communication data across the parallel subdomain boundary. The parallel efficiency was validated by applying the present method to an unsteady shock‐tube problem. The flows around oscillating NACA0012 wing and F‐5 wing were also calculated for the numerical verification of the present dynamic mesh adaptation and load balancing algorithm. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two‐dimensional implicit time‐dependent calculations on adaptive unstructured meshes with time evolving boundaries

An implicit multigrid‐driven algorithm for two‐dimensional incompressible laminar viscous flows has been coupled with a solution adaptation method and a mesh movement method for boundary movement. Time‐dependent calculations are performed implicitly by regarding each time step as a steady‐state problem in pseudo‐time. The method of artificial compressibility is used to solve the flow equations. The solution mesh adaptation method performs local mesh refinement using an incremental Delaunay algorithm and mesh coarsening by means of edge collapse. Mesh movement is achieved by modeling the computational domain as an elastic solid and solving the equilibrium equations for the stress field. The solution adaptation method has been validated by comparison with experimental results and other computational results for low Reynolds number flow over a shedding circular cylinder. Preliminary validation of the mesh movement method has been demonstrated by a comparison with experimental results of an oscillating airfoil and with computational results for an oscillating cylinder. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anisotropic mesh adaptation: towards user‐independent,mesh‐independent and solver‐independent CFD. Part III. Unstructured meshes

The present paper is the third article in a three‐part series on anisotropic mesh adaptation and its application to two‐ and three‐dimensional, structured and unstructured meshes. This third paper concerns the application of the full adaptation methodology to 2‐D unstructured meshes, including all four mesh modification strategies presented in Part I, i.e. refinement/coarsening, edge swapping and node movement. The mesh adaptation procedure is validated through a careful monitoring of a single adaptation step and of the solution–adaptation loop. Independence from the initial mesh and from the flow solver is illustrated. The efficiency of the overall methodology is investigated on relevant laminar and turbulent flow benchmarks. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interface‐fitted moving mesh method for axisymmetric two‐phase flow in microchannels

A boundary‐fitted moving mesh scheme is presented for the simulation of two‐phase flow in two‐dimensional and axisymmetric geometries. The incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations are solved using the finite element method, and the mini element is used to satisfy the inf‐sup condition. The interface between the phases is represented explicitly by an interface adapted mesh, thus allowing a sharp transition of the fluid properties. Surface tension is modelled as a volume force and is discretized in a consistent manner, thus allowing to obtain exact equilibrium (up to rounding errors) with the pressure gradient. This is demonstrated for a spherical droplet moving in a constant flow field. The curvature of the interface, required for the surface tension term, is efficiently computed with simple but very accurate geometric formulas. An adaptive moving mesh technique, where smoothing mesh velocities and remeshing are used to preserve the mesh quality, is developed and presented. Mesh refinement strategies, allowing tailoring of the refinement of the computational mesh, are also discussed. Accuracy and robustness of the present method are demonstrated on several validation test cases. The method is developed with the prospect of being applied to microfluidic flows and the simulation of microchannel evaporators used for electronics cooling. Therefore, the simulation results for the flow of a bubble in a microchannel are presented and compared to experimental data.     

An adaptive cut‐cell method for environmental fluid mechanics

In this work we present a numerical method for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in an environmental fluid mechanics context. The method is designed for the study of environmental flows that are multiscale, incompressible, variable‐density, and within arbitrarily complex and possibly anisotropic domains. The method is new because in this context we couple the embedded‐boundary (or cut‐cell) method for complex geometry with block‐structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) while maintaining conservation and second‐order accuracy. The accurate simulation of variable‐density fluids necessitates special care in formulating projection methods. This variable‐density formulation is well known for incompressible flows in unit‐aspect ratio domains, without AMR, and without complex geometry, but here we carefully present a new method that addresses the intersection of these issues. The methodology is based on a second‐order‐accurate projection method with high‐order‐accurate Godunov finite‐differencing, including slope limiting and a stable differencing of the nonlinear convection terms. The finite‐volume AMR discretizations are based on two‐way flux matching at refinement boundaries to obtain a conservative method that is second‐order accurate in solution error. The control volumes are formed by the intersection of the irregular embedded boundary with Cartesian grid cells. Unlike typical discretization methods, these control volumes naturally fit within parallelizable, disjoint‐block data structures, and permit dynamic AMR coarsening and refinement as the simulation progresses. We present two‐ and three‐dimensional numerical examples to illustrate the accuracy of the method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the immersed boundary‐lattice Boltzmann simulations of incompressible flows with freely moving objects

For simulating freely moving problems, conventional immersed boundary‐lattice Boltzmann methods encounter two major difficulties of an extremely large flow domain and the incompressible limit. To remove these two difficulties, this work proposes an immersed boundary‐lattice Boltzmann flux solver (IB‐LBFS) in the arbitrary Lagragian–Eulerian (ALE) coordinates and establishes a dynamic similarity theory. In the ALE‐based IB‐LBFS, the flow filed is obtained by using the LBFS on a moving Cartesian mesh, and the no‐slip boundary condition is implemented by using the boundary condition‐enforced immersed boundary method. The velocity of the Cartesian mesh is set the same as the translational velocity of the freely moving object so that there is no relative motion between the plate center and the mesh. This enables the ALE‐based IB‐LBFS to study flows with a freely moving object in a large open flow domain. By normalizing the governing equations for the flow domain and the motion of rigid body, six non‐dimensional parameters are derived and maintained to be the same in both physical systems and the lattice Boltzmann framework. This similarity algorithm enables the lattice Boltzmann equation‐based solver to study a general freely moving problem within the incompressible limit. The proposed solver and dynamic similarity theory have been successfully validated by simulating the flow around an in‐line oscillating cylinder, single particle sedimentation, and flows with a freely falling plate. The obtained results agree well with both numerical and experimental data. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A sharp‐interface immersed boundary framework for simulations of high‐speed inviscid compressible flows

A new finite‐volume flow solver based on the hybrid Cartesian immersed boundary (IB) framework is developed for the solution of high‐speed inviscid compressible flows. The IB method adopts a sharp‐interface approach, wherein the boundary conditions are enforced on the body geometry itself. A key component of the present solver is a novel reconstruction approach, in conjunction with inverse distance weighting, to compute the solutions in the vicinity of the solid‐fluid interface. We show that proposed reconstruction leads to second‐order spatial accuracy while also ensuring that the discrete conservation errors diminish linearly with grid refinement. Investigations of supersonic and hypersonic inviscid flows over different geometries are carried out for an extensive validation of the proposed flow solver. Studies on cylinder lift‐off and shape optimisation in supersonic flows further demonstrate the efficacy of the flow solver for computations with moving and shape‐changing geometries. These studies conclusively highlight the capability of the proposed IB methodology as a promising alternative for robust and accurate computations of compressible fluid flows on nonconformal Cartesian meshes.     

A weakly compressible MPS method for modeling of open‐boundary free‐surface flow

A mesh‐free particle method, based on the moving particle semi‐implicit (MPS) interaction model, has been developed for the simulation of two‐dimensional open‐boundary free‐surface flows. The incompressibility model in the original MPS has been replaced with a weakly incompressible model. The effect of this replacement on the efficiency and accuracy of the model has been investigated. The new inflow–outflow boundary conditions along with the particle recycling strategy proposed in this study extend the application of the model to open‐boundary problems. The final model is able to simulate open‐boundary free surface flow in cases of large deformation and fragmentation of free surface. The models and proposed algorithms have been validated and applied to sample problems. The results confirm the model's efficiency and accuracy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid immersed‐boundary and multi‐block lattice Boltzmann method for simulating fluid and moving‐boundaries interactions

A numerical method is developed for modelling the interactions between incompressible viscous fluid and moving boundaries. The principle of this method is introducing the immersed‐boundary concept in the framework of the lattice Boltzmann method, and improving the accuracy and efficiency of the simulation by refining the mesh near moving boundaries. Besides elastic boundary with a constitutive law, the method can also efficiently simulate solid moving‐boundary interacting with fluid by employing the direct forcing technique. The method is validated by the simulations of flow past a circular cylinder, two cylinders moving with respect to each other and flow around a hovering wing. The versatility of the method is demonstrated by the numerical studies including elastic filament flapping in the wake of a cylinder and fish‐like bodies swimming in quiescent fluid. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immersed boundary method for simulation of inviscid compressible flows

In this paper, an immersed boundary method for simulating inviscid compressible flows governed by Euler equations is presented. All the mesh points are classified as interior computed points, immersed boundary points (interior points closest to the solid boundary), and exterior points that are blanked out of computation. The flow variables at an immersed boundary point are determined via the approximate form of solution in the direction normal to the wall boundary. The normal velocity is evaluated by applying the no‐penetration boundary condition, and therefore, the influence of solid wall in the inviscid flow is taken into account. The pressure is computed with the local simplified momentum equation, and the density and the tangential velocity are evaluated by using the constant‐entropy relation and the constant‐total‐enthalpy relation, respectively. With a local coordinate system, the present method has been extended easily to the three‐dimensional case. The present work is the first endeavor to extend the idea of hybrid Cartesian/immersed boundary approach to compressible inviscid flows. The tedious task of handling multi‐valued points can be eliminated, and the overshoot resulting from the extrapolation for the evaluation of flow variables at exterior points can also be avoided. In order to validate the present method, inviscid compressible flows over fixed and moving bodies have been simulated. All the obtained numerical results show good agreement with available data in the literature. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of two‐phase flow with moving immersed boundaries

A two‐dimensional multi‐phase model for immiscible binary fluid flow including moving immersed objects is presented. The fluid motion is described by the incompressible Navier–Stokes equation coupled with a phase‐field model based on van der Waals' free energy density and the Cahn–Hilliard equation. A new phase‐field boundary condition was implemented with minimization of the free energy in a direct way, to specifically improve the physical behavior of the contact line dynamics for moving immersed objects. Numerical stability and execution time were significantly improved by the use of the new boundary condition. Convergence toward the analytical solution was demonstrated for equilibrium contact angle, the Lucas–Washburn theory and Stefan's problem. The proposed model may be used for multi‐phase flow problems with moving boundaries of complex geometry, such as the penetration of fluid into a deformable, porous medium. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computation of incompressible flows with immersed bodies by a simple ghost cell method

The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved by an implicit pressure correction method on Cartesian meshes with local refinement. A simple and stable ghost cell method is developed to treat the boundary condition for the immersed bodies in the flow field. Multigrid methods are developed for both velocity and pressure correction to enhance the stability and convergence of the solution process. It is shown that the spatial accuracy of the method is second order in L₂ norm for both velocity and pressure. Various steady and unsteady flows over a 2D circular cylinder and a 3D sphere are computed to validate the present method. The capability of the present method to treat a moving body is also demonstrated. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of three‐dimensional flows over moving objects by an improved immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method

An improved immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method (IB–LBM) developed recently [28] was applied in this work to simulate three‐dimensional (3D) flows over moving objects. By enforcing the non‐slip boundary condition, the method could avoid any flow penetration to the wall. In the developed IB–LBM solver, the flow field is obtained on the non‐uniform mesh by the efficient LBM that is based on the second‐order one‐dimensional interpolation. As a consequence, its coefficients could be computed simply. By simulating flows over a stationary sphere and torus [28] accurately and efficiently, the proposed IB–LBM showed its ability to handle 3D flow problems with curved boundaries. In this paper, we further applied this method to simulate 3D flows around moving boundaries. As a first example, the flow over a rotating sphere was simulated. The obtained results agreed very well with the previous data in the literature. Then, simulation of flow over a rotating torus was conducted. The capability of the improved IB–LBM for solving 3D flows over moving objects with complex geometries was demonstrated via the simulations of fish swimming and dragonfly flight. The numerical results displayed quantitative and qualitative agreement with the date in the literature. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Large eddy simulations of wall‐bounded flows using a simplified immersed boundary method and high‐order compact schemes

This paper presents a solution algorithm based on an immersed boundary (IB) method that can be easily implemented in high‐order codes for incompressible flows. The time integration is performed using a predictor‐corrector approach, and the projection method is used for pressure‐velocity coupling. Spatial discretization is based on compact difference schemes and is performed on half‐staggered meshes. A basic algorithm for body‐fitted meshes using the aforementioned solution method was developed by A. Tyliszczak (see article “A high‐order compact difference algorithm for half‐staggered grids for laminar and turbulent incompressible flows” in Journal of Computational Physics) and proved to be very accurate. In this paper, the formulated algorithm is adapted for use with the IB method in the framework of large eddy simulations. The IB method is implemented using its simplified variant without the interpolation (stepwise approach). The computations are performed for a laminar flow around a 2D cylinder, a turbulent flow in a channel with a wavy wall, and around a sphere. Comparisons with literature data confirm that the proposed method can be successfully applied for complex flow problems. The results are verified using the classical approach with body‐fitted meshes and show very good agreement both in laminar and turbulent regimes. The mean (velocity and turbulent kinetic energy profiles and drag coefficients) and time‐dependent (Strouhal number based on the drag coefficient) quantities are analyzed, and they agree well with reference solutions. Two subfilter models are compared, ie, the model of Vreman (see article “An eddy‐viscosity subgrid‐scale model for turbulent shear flow: algebraic theory and applications” in Physics and Fluids) and σ model (Nicoud et al, see article “Using singular values to build a subgrid‐scale model for large eddy simulations” in Physics and Fluids). The tests did not reveal evident advantages of any of these models, and from the point of view of solution accuracy, the quality of the computational meshes turned out to be much more important than the subfilter modeling.     

Two‐dimensional compact finite difference immersed boundary method

We present a compact finite differences method for the calculation of two‐dimensional viscous flows in biological fluid dynamics applications. This is achieved by using body‐forces that allow for the imposition of boundary conditions in an immersed moving boundary that does not coincide with the computational grid. The unsteady, incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved in a Cartesian staggered grid with fourth‐order Runge–Kutta temporal discretization and fourth‐order compact schemes for spatial discretization, used to achieve highly accurate calculations. Special attention is given to the interpolation schemes on the boundary of the immersed body. The accuracy of the immersed boundary solver is verified through grid convergence studies. Validation of the method is done by comparison with reference experimental results. In order to demonstrate the application of the method, 2D small insect hovering flight is calculated and compared with available experimental and computational results. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order element based adaptive mesh refinement strategy for three‐dimensional unstructured grid

Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) shows attractive properties in automatically refining the flow region of interest, and with AMR, better prediction can be obtained with much less labor work and cost compared to manually remeshing or the global mesh refinement. Cartesian AMR is well established; however, AMR on hybrid unstructured mesh, which is heavily used in the high‐Reynolds number flow simulation, is less matured and existing methods may result in degraded mesh quality, which mostly happens in the boundary layer or near the sharp geometric features. User intervention or additional constraints, such as freezing all boundary layer elements or refining the whole boundary layer, are required to assist the refinement process. In this work, a novel AMR strategy is developed to handle existing difficulties. In the new method, high‐order unstructured elements are first generated based on the baseline mesh; then the refinement is conducted in the parametric space; at last, the mesh suitable for the solver is output. Generating refined elements in the parametric space with high‐order elements is the key of this method and this helps to guarantee both the accuracy and robustness. With the current method, 3‐dimensional hybrid unstructured mesh of huge size and complex geometry can be automatically refined, without user intervention nor additional constraints. With test cases including the 2‐dimensional airfoil and 3‐dimensional full aircraft, the current AMR method proves to be accurate, simple, and robust.     

Two‐dimensional anisotropic Cartesian mesh adaptation for the compressible Euler equations

Simulating transient compressible flows involving shock waves presents challenges to the CFD practitioner in terms of the mesh quality required to resolve discontinuities and prevent smearing. This paper discusses a novel two‐dimensional Cartesian anisotropic mesh adaptation technique implemented for transient compressible flow. This technique, originally developed for laminar incompressible flow, is efficient because it refines and coarsens cells using criteria that consider the solution in each of the cardinal directions separately. In this paper, the method will be applied to compressible flow. The procedure shows promise in its ability to deliver good quality solutions while achieving computational savings. Transient shock wave diffraction over a backward step and shock reflection over a forward step are considered as test cases because they demonstrate that the quality of the solution can be maintained as the mesh is refined and coarsened in time. The data structure is explained in relation to the computational mesh, and the object‐oriented design and implementation of the code is presented. Refinement and coarsening algorithms are outlined. Computational savings over uniform and isotropic mesh approaches are shown to be significant. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A gas‐kinetic scheme for the simulation of turbulent flows on unstructured meshes

This paper presents a numerical method for simulating turbulent flows via coupling the Boltzmann BGK equation with Spalart–Allmaras one equation turbulence model. Both the Boltzmann BGK equation and the turbulence model equation are carried out using the finite volume method on unstructured meshes, which is different from previous works on structured grid. The application of the gas‐kinetic scheme is extended to the simulation of turbulent flows with arbitrary geometries. The adaptive mesh refinement technique is also adopted to reduce the computational cost and improve the efficiency of meshes. To organize the unstructured mesh data structure efficiently, a non‐manifold hybrid mesh data structure is extended for polygonal cells. Numerical experiments are performed on incompressible flow over a smooth flat plate and compressible turbulent flows around a NACA 0012 airfoil using unstructured hybrid meshes. These numerical results are found to be in good agreement with experimental data and/or other numerical solutions, demonstrating the applicability of the proposed method to simulate both subsonic and transonic turbulent flows. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An hp‐adaptive unstructured finite volume solver for compressible flows

The idea of hp‐adaptation, which has originally been developed for compact schemes (such as finite element methods), suggests an adaptation scheme using a mixture of mesh refinement and order enrichment based on the smoothness of the solution to obtain an accurate solution efficiently. In this paper, we develop an hp‐adaptation framework for unstructured finite volume methods using residual‐based and adjoint‐based error indicators. For the residual‐based error indicator, we use a higher‐order discrete operator to estimate the truncation error, whereas this estimate is weighted by the solution of the discrete adjoint problem for an output of interest to form the adaptation indicator for adjoint‐based adaptations. We perform our adaptation by local subdivision of cells with nonconforming interfaces allowed and local reconstruction of higher‐order polynomials for solution approximations. We present our results for two‐dimensional compressible flow problems including subsonic inviscid, transonic inviscid, and subsonic laminar flow around the NACA 0012 airfoil and also turbulent flow over a flat plate. Our numerical results suggest the efficiency and accuracy advantages of adjoint‐based hp‐adaptations over uniform refinement and also over residual‐based adaptation for flows with and without singularities.