Improvements in the reliability and quality of unstructured hybrid mesh generation

This paper presents a reliable and automated approach to the generation of unstructured hybrid grids comprised of tetrahedra, prisms and pyramids for high Reynolds number viscous flow simulations. To enhance robustness, the hybrid mesh generation process starts with the formation of an isotropic tetrahedral grid. Prismatic layers are then added on no‐slip walls fully automatically by obeying user‐specified boundary conditions and three parameters: the number of the layers, an initial layer thickness normal to the walls, and a stretching factor. Topological modifications to the original isotropic tetrahedral elements are prohibited during the layer generation process. The tetrahedral elements near no‐slip walls are shifted inward and the resulting gap between the tetrahedra and the walls is filled up with prismatic elements. To enhance the quality of the prismatic layers around sharp corners, two normals are evaluated for the marching process in these regions. The addition of prismatic elements is locally stopped if negative‐volume elements are created or not enough space is left. An angle‐based smoothing method ensures that the quality of the tetrahedral elements is retained for a reasonable computational cost. The method is demonstrated for two scaled experimental supersonic airplane models designed at the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL). Numerical results are compared with wind tunnel experimental data. 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.     

适应复杂外形的三维粘性混合网格生成算法

提出一类适应复杂外形的粘性混合网格生成算法。表面网格由前沿推进三角形曲面网格程序获得,边界层布置各向异性的三棱柱体网格,远物面区域采用Delaunay方法生成四面体网格。针对模型的复杂几何特征,综合采用了各种网格处理技术,以保证边界层网格的质量,并避免算法失效问题。网格实例及计算结果表明了本文算法的实用性及和效性。     

黏性边界层网格自动生成

高雷诺数黏性流动在壁面附近存在边界层,在计算模拟中自动生成可靠且有效的计算网格仍然是计算流体力学存在的瓶颈.三棱柱/四面体混合网格技术在一定程度上缓解了这个困难.然而,对于复杂外形的情况,在边界层内自动高效生成高质量的三棱柱单元仍然十分困难.常用的层推进法在凹凸区域及角点处生成的边界层网格单元质量较差,边界层网格最外层尺寸不均匀.针对这些问题,发展了一种黏性边界层网格自动生成方法,通过顶点周围边的二面角识别物面网格特征确定多生长方向,预估并调整生长高度处理相交情况.同时提出一种三维前沿尺寸调节方式,提高了边界层网格单元的正交性,保证了边界层网格与远场网格尺寸的光滑过渡.通过ONERA M6翼型以及带发动机短舱的DLR-F6翼身组合体等外形的网格生成实例及绕流数值模拟,将计算值与标准实验值进行对比,结果表明:该方法能够自动高效地生成满足数值计算需求的混合网格.     

Mono‐block and non‐matching multi‐block structured mesh adaptation based on aerodynamic functional total derivatives for RANS flow

An enhanced goal‐oriented mesh adaptation method is presented based on aerodynamic functional total derivatives with respect to mesh nodes in a Reynolds‐Averaged Navier‐Stokes (RANS) finite‐volume mono‐block and non‐matching multi‐block‐structured grid framework. This method falls under the category of methods involving the adjoint vector of the function of interest. The contribution of a Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model is taken into account through its linearization. Meshes are adapted accordingly to the proposed indicator. Applications to 2D RANS flow about a RAE2822 airfoil in transonic, and detached subsonic conditions are presented for the drag coefficient estimation. The asset of the proposed method is patent. The obtained 2D anisotropic mono‐block mesh well captures flow features as well as global aerodynamic functionals. Interestingly, the constraints imposed by structured grids may be relaxed by the use of non‐matching multi‐block approach that limits the outward propagation of local mesh refinement through all of the computational domain. The proposed method also leads to accurate results for these multi‐block meshes but at a fraction of the cost. Finally, the method is also successfully applied to a more complex geometry, namely, a mono‐block mesh in a 3D RANS transonic flow about an M6 wing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards consistent hybrid overset mesh methods for rotorcraft CFD

The overset mesh method chimera is popular within the rotorcraft research community, because the use of multiple, non‐matching grids make the CFD simulations of bodies in relative motion much simpler. Consequently, the relative motion between the helicopter blades and fuselage can be accurately accounted for. In this paper, the method for treating overset grids within CFD codes is presented. It is compatible with multi‐block, structured‐grid solvers. The proposed method is based on hierarchy of overset, non‐matching grids, whose cells are automatically identified as computational or non‐computational and localised with respect to all grids they overlap with. The efficiency of the method relies on the hierarchical, multi‐step approach, for the overset mesh localisation and the use of a tree search. Because of the high efficiency of the algorithm, the search for overlapping cells can be carried out on‐the‐fly, during time‐marching of the unsteady, implicit CFD solver. In addition, the algorithm is suitable for parallel execution. The method has been demonstrated for several flows, ranging from simple aerofoils to rotor‐body interaction. The paper presents and demonstrates the method and shows that it has a low CPU overhead. It also highlights the limitations of the method and suggests remedies for improvement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hybrid mesh generation using advancing reduction technique

This paper presents an application of the advancing reduction technique for 2D hybrid mesh generation (triangles + quadrilaterals). Based on an initial rectangle mesh (RM) covering the whole domain, the advancing reduction technique coarsens the base RM in a marching way from the boundary to the interior of the domain so that different zones of sub‐RMs with different edge lengths are recognized. These sub‐RMs are connected to each other with the so‐called transition layers which consist of the transition triangles and quadrilaterals. As demonstrated by examples, the proposed method is simple, efficient, and easy to implement. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

面向复杂几何模型的并行四面体网格生成方法

面向大规模工程计算等数值模拟领域,提出了一种支持复杂几何模型的大规模四面体网格并行生成方法。该方法以复杂几何模型作为输入,首先采用串行网格生成方法生成初始四面体网格,然后通过两级区域分解方法将初始网格分解为多个子网格并分配到相应的进程中,进程间并行地提取出子网格的表面网格,并基于几何模型对面网格进行贴体加密,最后对加密后的面网格采用Delaunay方法重新生成四面体网格,该方法可以更好地适应高性能计算机体系结构,较好地克服了并行方法中并行性能和网格质量不能兼顾的问题。对三峡大坝模型进行测试和验证,证明该方法具有良好的并行效率和可扩展性,可以在数万处理器核上并行生成数十亿高质量四面体网格。     

Hybrid mesh adaptation applied to industrial numerical combustion

This paper presents an anisotropic mesh adaptation method applied to industrial combustion problems. The method is based on a measure of the distance between two Riemannian metrics called metric non‐conformity. This measure, which can be used to build a cost function to adapt meshes comprising several types of mesh elements, provides the basis for a generic mesh adaptation approach applicable to various types of physical problems governed by partial differential equations. The approach is shown to be applicable to industrial combustion problems, through the specification of a target metric computed as the intersection of several Hessian matrices reconstructed from the main variables of the governing equations. Numerical results show that the approach is cost effective in that it can drastically improve the prediction of temperature and species distributions in the flame region of a combustor while reducing computational cost. The results can be used as a basis for pollutant prediction models. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stabilized Nitsche‐type extended embedding mesh approach for 3D low‐ and high‐Reynolds‐number flows

This paper presents a stabilized extended finite element method (XFEM) based fluid formulation to embed arbitrary fluid patches into a fixed background fluid mesh. The new approach is highly beneficial when it comes to computational grid generation for complex domains, as it allows locally increased resolutions independent from size and structure of the background mesh. Motivating applications for such a domain decomposition technique are complex fluid‐structure interaction problems, where an additional boundary layer mesh is used to accurately capture the flow around the structure. The objective of this work is to provide an accurate and robust XFEM‐based coupling for low‐ as well as high‐Reynolds‐number flows. Our formulation is built from the following essential ingredients: Coupling conditions on the embedded interface are imposed weakly using Nitsche's method supported by extra terms to guarantee mass conservation and to control the convective mass transport across the interface for transient viscous‐dominated and convection‐dominated flows. Residual‐based fluid stabilizations in the interior of the fluid subdomains and accompanying face‐oriented fluid and ghost‐penalty stabilizations in the interface zone stabilize the formulation in the entire fluid domain. A detailed numerical study of our stabilized embedded fluid formulation, including an investigation of variants of Nitsche's method for viscous flows, shows optimal error convergence for viscous‐dominated and convection‐dominated flow problems independent of the interface position. Challenging two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional numerical examples highlight the robustness of our approach in all flow regimes: benchmark computations for laminar flow around a cylinder, a turbulent driven cavity flow at Re = 10000 and the flow interacting with a three‐dimensional flexible wall. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种基于双前沿推进的边界层网格生成算法

高雷诺数粘性流动模拟对边界层内的网格正交性有特殊要求.对于复杂外形,这类问题的网格自动化生成十分困难.面向该问题,提出一种双前沿推进思想,并形成一种面向复杂几何外形的边界层网格全自动生成算法.结合多种网格技术处理局部几何特征以保证边界层网格的质量.双前沿推进思想同时适用于多块结构网格和混合网格的边界层网格生成.多个模型...     

An immersed discontinuous Galerkin method for compressible Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured meshes

We introduce an immersed high-order discontinuous Galerkin method for solving the compressible Navier-Stokes equations on non–boundary-fitted meshes. The flow equations are discretised with a mixed discontinuous Galerkin formulation and are advanced in time with an explicit time marching scheme. The discretisation meshes may contain simplicial (triangular or tetrahedral) elements of different sizes and need not be structured. On the discretisation mesh, the fluid domain boundary is represented with an implicit signed distance function. The cut-elements partially covered by the solid domain are integrated after tessellation with the marching triangle or tetrahedra algorithms. Two alternative techniques are introduced to overcome the excessive stable time step restrictions imposed by cut-elements. In the first approach, the cut-basis functions are replaced with the extrapolated basis functions from the nearest largest element. In the second approach, the cut-basis functions are simply scaled proportionally to the fraction of the cut-element covered by the solid. To achieve high-order accuracy, additional nodes are introduced on the element faces abutting the solid boundary. Subsequently, the faces are curved by projecting the introduced nodes to the boundary. The proposed approach is verified and validated with several two- and three-dimensional subsonic and hypersonic low Reynolds number flow applications, including the flow over a cylinder, a space capsule, and an aerospace vehicle.     

前沿推进曲面四边形网格生成算法

将一类前沿推进三角形曲面网格生成算法拓展到曲面四边形网格生成。新算法逐个单元推进前沿,避免了铺路法（Paving）逐排推进方式的鲁棒性问题,针对四边形算法在理想点计算、候选点列表构建和新单元生成等环节存在的特殊技术问题给出了系统的解决方案。数值实验表明,本文算法能针对复杂的组合参数曲面自动生成全四边形网格,网格质量优于...     

An approach of dynamic mesh adaptation for simulating 3‐dimensional unsteady moving‐immersed‐boundary flows

In this paper, we present an approach of dynamic mesh adaptation for simulating complex 3‐dimensional incompressible moving‐boundary flows by immersed boundary methods. Tetrahedral meshes are adapted by a hierarchical refining/coarsening algorithm. Regular refinement is accomplished by dividing 1 tetrahedron into 8 subcells, and irregular refinement is only for eliminating the hanging points. Merging the 8 subcells obtained by regular refinement, the mesh is coarsened. With hierarchical refining/coarsening, mesh adaptivity can be achieved by adjusting the mesh only 1 time for each adaptation period. The level difference between 2 neighboring cells never exceeds 1, and the geometrical quality of mesh does not degrade as the level of adaptive mesh increases. A predictor‐corrector scheme is introduced to eliminate the phase lag between adapted mesh and unsteady solution. The error caused by each solution transferring from the old mesh to the new adapted one is small because most of the nodes on the 2 meshes are coincident. An immersed boundary method named local domain‐free discretization is employed to solve the flow equations. Several numerical experiments have been conducted for 3‐dimensional incompressible moving‐boundary flows. By using the present approach, the number of mesh nodes is reduced greatly while the accuracy of solution can be preserved.     

基于AFT-Delaunay的二维解耦并行网格生成算法

面向平面任意几何区域网格生成,提出了一种将波前法AFT(Advancing Front Technique)与Delaunay法相结合的解耦并行网格生成算法。算法主要思想是沿着求解几何区域惯性轴,采用扩展的AFT-Delaunay算法生成高质量三角形网格墙,递归地将几何区域动态划分成多个彼此解耦的子区域;采用OpenMP多线程并行技术,将子区域分配给多个CPU并行生成子区域网格;子区域内部的网格生成复用AFT-Delaunay算法,保证了生成网格的质量、效率和一致性要求。本算法优先生成几何边界与交界面网格,有利于提高有限元计算精度;各个子区域的网格生成彼此完全解耦,因此并行网格生成过程无需通信。该方法克服了并行交界面网格质量恶化难题,且具有良好的并行加速比,能够全自动、高效率地并行生成高质量的三角网格。     

Multiscale simulation of flow and heat transfer of nanofluid with lattice Boltzmann method

Based on the lattice Boltzmann (LB) approach, a novel hybrid method has been proposed for getting insight into the microscale characteristics of the multicomponent flow of nanofluid. In this method, the whole computational domain is divided into two regions in which different-sized meshes are involved for simulation (fine mesh and coarse mesh). The multicomponent LB method is adopted in the fine mesh region, and the single-component LB approach is applied to the coarse mesh region where the nanofluid is treated as a mixed single-component fluid. The conservation principles of mass, momentum and energy are used to derive a hybrid scheme across the different scaled regions. Numerical simulation is carried out for the Couette flow and convective heat transfer in a parallel plate channel to validate the hybrid method. The computational results indicate that by means of the present method, not only the microscopic characteristics of the nanofluid flow can be simulated, but also the computational efficiency can be remarkably improved compared with the pure multicomponent LB method.     

Robust control volume finite element methods for numerical wave tanks using extreme adaptive anisotropic meshes

Multiphase inertia-dominated flow simulations, and free surface flow models in particular, continue to this day to present many challenges in terms of accuracy and computational cost to industry and research communities. Numerical wave tanks and their use for studying wave-structure interactions are a good example. Finite element method (FEM) with anisotropic meshes combined with dynamic mesh algorithms has already shown the potential to significantly reduce the number of elements and simulation time with no accuracy loss. However, mesh anisotropy can lead to mesh quality-related instabilities. This article presents a very robust FEM approach based on a control volume discretization of the pressure field for inertia dominated flows, which can overcome the typically encountered mesh quality limitations associated with extremely anisotropic elements. Highly compressive methods for the water-air interface are used here. The combination of these methods is validated with multiphase free surface flow benchmark cases, showing very good agreement with experiments even for extremely anisotropic meshes, reducing by up to two orders of magnitude the required number of elements to obtain accurate solutions.     

CFD‐based optimization of aerofoils using radial basis functions for domain element parameterization and mesh deformation

A novel domain element shape parameterization method is presented for computational fluid dynamics‐based shape optimization. The method is to achieve two aims: (1) provide a generic ‘wrap‐around’ optimization tool that is independent of both flow solver and grid generation package and (2) provide a method that allows high‐fidelity aerodynamic optimization of two‐ and three‐dimensional bodies with a low number of design variables. The parameterization technique uses radial basis functions to transfer domain element movements into deformations of the design surface and corresponding aerodynamic mesh, thus allowing total independence from the grid generation package (structured or unstructured). Independence from the flow solver (either inviscid, viscous, aeroelastic) is achieved by obtaining sensitivity information for an advanced gradient‐based optimizer (feasible sequential quadratic programming) by finite‐differences. Results are presented for two‐dimensional aerofoil inverse design and drag optimization problems. Inverse design results demonstrate that a large proportion of the design space is feasible with a relatively low number of design variables using the domain element parameterization. Heavily constrained (in lift, volume, and moment) two‐dimensional aerofoil drag optimization has shown that significant improvements over existing designs can be achieved using this method, through the use of various objective functions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.