Third‐order Cartesian overset mesh adaptation method for solving steady compressible flows

A third‐order mesh generation and adaptation method is presented for solving the steady compressible Euler equations. For interior points, a third‐order scheme is used on Cartesian and curvilinear meshes. Concerning the mesh adaptation, the method of Meakin is also extended to third order. The accuracy of the new overset mesh adaptation method is demonstrated by a grid convergence study for 2‐D inviscid model problems and results are compared with a second‐order method. Finally, the method is applied to the computation of an inviscid 3‐D flow around a hovering blade of the ONERA 7A helicopter rotor exhibiting an improvement in the wake capture. With a 7 million point mesh, the tip vortex can be followed for more than three rotor revolutions with the third‐order method. The CPU time needed for this calculation is only 3% higher than with a conventional second‐order method. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sparse element for shallow water wave equations on triangle meshes

Within the mixed FEM, the mini‐element that uses a bubble shape function for the solution of the shallow water wave equations on triangle meshes is simplified to a sparse element formulation. The new formulation has linear shape functions for water levels and constant shape functions for velocities inside each element. The suppression of decoupled spurious solutions is excellent with the new scheme. The linear dispersion relation of the new element has similar advantages as that of the wave equation scheme (generalised wave continuity scheme) proposed by Lynch and Gray. It is shown that the relation is monotonic over all wave numbers. In this paper, the time stepping scheme is included in the dispersion analysis. In case of a combined space–time staggering, the dispersion relation can be improved for the shortest waves. The sparse element is applied in the flow model Bubble that conserves mass exactly. At the same time, because of the limited number of degrees of freedom, the computational efficiency is high. The scheme is not restricted to orthogonal triangular meshes. Three test cases demonstrate the very good accuracy of the proposed scheme. The examples are the classical quarter annulus test case for the linearised shallow water equations, the hydraulic jump and the tide in the Elbe river mouth. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 3D UNSTRUCTURED MESH ADAPTATION ALGORITHM FOR TIME-DEPENDENT SHOCK-DOMINATED PROBLEMS

In this paper we present a tetrahedron-based, h-refinement-type algorithm for the solution of problems in 3D gas dynamics using unstructured mesh adaptation. The mesh adaptation algorithm is coupled to a cell-centred, Riemann problem-based, finite volume scheme of the MUSCL type, employing an approximate Riemann solver. The adaptive scheme is then used to compute the diffraction of shock waves around a box section corner for subsonic and supersonic post-shock flow. In the subsonic case, preliminary measurements of vortex filament speed and vortical Mach number are in broad quantitative agreement with known theoretical results. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

FEM‐BEM coupling for the exterior Stokes problem with non‐conforming finite elements and an application to small droplet deformation dynamics

A non‐conforming, discontinuous Galerkin finite element–boundary element coupling procedure is presented for the exterior planar Stokes problem. The novel coupled formulation is developed using that for the conforming case as a guide to the introduction of extra mortar variables used to couple a discontinuous interior finite element solution with a continuous exterior boundary element solution. Convergence results for the new scheme are presented, for a range of different interior penalties, on computational domains discretized with regular structured meshes. To illustrate an application, the excitations required to model two‐phase droplet deformations in an extensional flow, under simple surface tension, with the new scheme are also presented. For a selection of different drop viscocities and exterior flows, with and without a rotational component, the progression to a steady‐state deformation of initially undeformed circular drops is calculated and the results compared with those from both a conforming FEM‐BEM equivalent scheme and from a small perturbation analysis where available. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High-order ALE method for the Navier–Stokes equations on a moving hybrid unstructured mesh using flux reconstruction method

The flux reconstruction (FR) formulation can unify several popular discontinuous basis high-order methods for fluid dynamics, including the discontinuous Galerkin method, in a simple, efficient form. An arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) extension to the high-order FR scheme is developed here for moving mesh fluid flow problems. The ALE Navier–Stokes equations are derived by introducing a grid velocity. The conservation law are spatially discretised on hybrid unstructured meshes using Huynh’s scheme (Huynh 2007) on anisotropic elements (quadrilaterals) and using Correction Procedure via Reconstruction scheme on isotropic elements (triangles). The temporal discretisation uses both explicit and implicit treatments. The mesh movement is described by node positions given as a time series, instead of an analytical formula. The geometric conservation law is tested using free stream preservation problem. An isentropic vortex propagation test case is performed to show the high-order accuracy of the developed method on both moving and fixed hybrid meshes. Flow around an oscillating cylinder shows the capability of the method to solve moving boundary viscous flow problems, with the numeric method further verified by comparison of the result on a smoothly deforming mesh and a rigid moving mesh.     

An unsteady multiblock multigrid scheme for lifting forward flight rotor simulation

Numerical simulation of multi‐bladed lifting rotors in forward flight is considered. The flow‐solver presented is multiblock and unsteady, which is essential for forward flight, and also includes multigrid acceleration to reduce run‐times. A structured multiblock grid generator specifically for rotor blades has also been developed and is presented here. Previous work has shown that hovering lifting rotor flows are particularly expensive to simulate, since the capture of the vortical wake below the disc requires a long numerical integration time; more than 20 revolutions for an unsteady simulation, or more than 40000 time‐steps for a single grid steady simulation. It is demonstrated here that only two or three revolutions are required to obtain a converged solution for forward flight, since the wake is swept downstream. This requires less than 1.5 × the run‐time of a steady hovering simulation, for the same grid density around each blade, even though an unsteady simulation is required and the complete disk must be solved rather than one blade as in hover. It is demonstrated that very fine meshes are required to capture the unsteady tip vortex motion, and the effects on blade loading of blade‐vortex interaction and rotor shaft inclination are also considered. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Hybrid Domain Decomposition and Multigrid Method for the Acceleration of Compressible Viscous Flow Calculations on Unstructured Triangular Meshes

This paper is concerned with the formulation and the evaluation of a hybrid solution method that makes use of domain decomposition and multigrid principles for the calculation of two-dimensional compressible viscous flows on unstructured triangular meshes. More precisely, a non-overlapping additive domain decomposition method is used to coordinate concurrent subdomain solutions with a multigrid method. This hybrid method is developed in the context of a flow solver for the Navier-Stokes equations which is based on a combined finite element/finite volume formulation on unstructured triangular meshes. Time integration of the resulting semi-discrete equations is performed using a linearized backward Euler implicit scheme. As a result, each pseudo time step requires the solution of a sparse linear system. In this study, a non-overlapping domain decomposition algorithm is used for advancing the solution at each implicit time step. Algebraically, the Schwarz algorithm is equivalent to a Jacobi iteration on a linear system whose matrix has a block structure. A substructuring technique can be applied to this matrix in order to obtain a fully implicit scheme in terms of interface unknowns. In the present approach, the interface unknowns are numerical fluxes. The interface system is solved by means of a full GMRES method. Here, the local system solves that are induced by matrix-vector products with the interface operator, are performed using a multigrid by volume agglomeration method. The resulting hybrid domain decomposition and multigrid solver is applied to the computation of several steady flows around a geometry of NACA0012 airfoil.     

US-FE-LSPIM四边形单元及其在几何非线性问题中的应用

为了提高在网格畸变时的数值计算精度,基于非对称有限单元的概念,提出US-FE-LSPIM四边形单元。该单元是利用传统的四节点等参元形函数集和FE—LSPIM四边形单元形函数集分别作为检验函数和试函数而构成。前者用于满足单元间和单元内的位移连续性要求,后者用于满足位移完备性要求。该单元结合了有限单元法和无网格法的优点,能...     

Diffraction of waves by semi-infinite breakwater using finite and infinite elements

A finite and infinite element model is derived to predict wave patterns around a semi-infinite breakwater in water of constant depth. Both circular and square meshes of elements are used. The wave theory used is that of Berkhoff. The appropriate boundary conditions for finite and infinite boundaries are described. The singularity in the velocity at the breakwater tip is modelled effectively using the technique of Henshell and Shaw originally developed in elasticity. The results agree well with the analytical solution. In addition the problem of waves incident upon a semi-infinite breakwater and parabolic shoal, where both diffraction and refraction are present, is solved. There is no analytical solution for this case. The combination of finite and infinite elements is found to be an effective and accurate technique for such problems.     

A triangular quasi-conforming finite element for transient dynamic analysis

A type of 3 node triangular element is constructed by the Quasi-conforming method, which may be used to solve the equation of a type of inverse problem of wave propagation after Laplace transformation Δu−A ² u=0. The strains in the element are approximated by an exponential function and the string-net function between neighbouring elements is approximated by one dimensional general solution of the equation. Furthermore the strain field satisfies the equation, and therefore in the derivation of the element formulation, no shape function is needed. In this sense, it is a kind of hybrid element. Compared with the ordinary linear triangular element, the new one features higher precision with coarse meshes. Some numerical tests are presented. The project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

用鲁棒Riemann求解器和运动重叠网格计算旋翼粘性绕流

发展了一种基于鲁棒Riemann求解器和运动重叠网格技术计算直升机悬停旋翼流场的方法。基于惯性坐标系,悬停旋翼流场是非定常流场,控制方程为可压缩Reynolds平均Navier-Stoke方程,其对流项采用Roe近似Reimann求解器离散,使用改进的五阶加权基本无振荡格式进行高阶重构,非定常时间推进采用含牛顿型LUSGS子迭代的全隐式双时间步方法。为实施旋转运动和便于捕捉尾迹,计算采用运动重叠网格技术。计算得到的桨叶表面压力分布及桨尖涡涡核位置都与实验结果吻合较好。数值结果表明:所发展方法对桨尖涡具有较高的分辨率,对激波具有较好的捕捉能力,该方法可进一步推广到前飞旋翼粘性绕流的计算。     

周期分布多边形夹杂奇异性应力干涉问题的研究

采用一种新型的杂交元模型和一种单胞模型来解决周期分布多边形夹杂角部的奇异性应力相互干涉的问题。新型杂交元模型是基于广义Hellinger-Reissner变分原理建立的,其中奇异性应力场分量和位移场分量是采用有限元特征分析法的数值特征解得到的。使用当前的新型杂交元模型,只需要在夹杂角部邻域的周界上划分一维单元,避免了像传统有限元模型那样需要划分高密度二维单元。文中给出了代表奇异性应力场强度的夹杂角部广义应力强度因子数值解,并考虑材料属性、夹杂尺寸和夹杂位置关系的影响。算例中,考虑了夹杂和基体完全接合的情况,并给出了考核例。结果表明:当前模型能得到高精度数值解,且收敛性好;与传统有限元法和积分方程方法相比,该模型更具有通用性,为非均质材料的细观力学分析打下了基础。     

Hybrid mesh generation with embedded surfaces using a multiple marching direction approach

This paper proposes a method for the creation of hybrid meshes with embedded surfaces for viscous flow simulations as an extension of the multiple marching direction approach (AIAA J. 2007; 45 (1):162–167). The multiple marching direction approach enables to place semi‐structured elements around singular points, where valid semi‐structured elements cannot be placed using conventional hybrid mesh generation methods. This feature is discussed first with a couple of examples. Elements sometimes need to be clustered inside a computational domain to obtain more accurate results. For example, solution features, such as shocks, vortex cores and wake regions, can be extracted during the process of adaptive mesh generation. These features can be represented as surface meshes embedded in a computational domain. Semi‐structured elements can be placed around the embedded surface meshes using the multiple marching direction approach with a pretreatment method. Tetrahedral elements can be placed easily instead. A couple of results are presented to demonstrate the capability of the mesh generation method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An h-adaptive solution of the spherical blast wave problem

Shock waves and contact discontinuities usually appear in compressible flows, requiring a fine mesh in order to achieve an acceptable accuracy of the numerical solution. The usage of a mesh adaptation strategy is convenient as uniform refinement of the whole mesh becomes prohibitive in three-dimensional (3D) problems. An unsteady h-adaptive strategy for unstructured finite element meshes is introduced. Non-conformity of the refined mesh and a bounded decrease in the geometrical quality of the elements are some features of the refinement algorithm. A 3D extension of the well-known refinement constraint for 2D meshes is used to enforce a smooth size transition among neighbour elements with different levels of refinement. A density-based gradient indicator is used to track discontinuities. The solution procedure is partially parallelised, i.e. the inviscid flow equations are solved in parallel with a finite element SUPG formulation with shock capturing terms while the adaptation of the mesh is sequentially performed. Results are presented for a spherical blast wave driven by a point-like explosion with an initial pressure jump of 10⁵ atmospheres. The adapted solution is compared to that computed on a fixed mesh. Also, the results provided by the theory of self-similar solutions are considered for the analysis. In this particular problem, adapting the mesh to the solution accounts for approximately 4% of the total simulation time and the refinement algorithm scales almost linearly with the size of the problem.     

A hybrid vertex-centered finite volume/element method for viscous incompressible flows on non-staggered unstructured meshes

This paper proposes a hybrid vertex-centered finite volume/finite element method for solution of the two dimensional (2D) incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured grids.An incremental pressure fractional step method is adopted to handle the velocity-pressure coupling.The velocity and the pressure are collocated at the node of the vertex-centered control volume which is formed by joining the centroid of cells sharing the common vertex.For the temporal integration of the momentum equations,an implicit second-order scheme is utilized to enhance the computational stability and eliminate the time step limit due to the diffusion term.The momentum equations are discretized by the vertex-centered finite volume method (FVM) and the pressure Poisson equation is solved by the Galerkin finite element method (FEM).The momentum interpolation is used to damp out the spurious pressure wiggles.The test case with analytical solutions demonstrates second-order accuracy of the current hybrid scheme in time and space for both velocity and pressure.The classic test cases,the lid-driven cavity flow,the skew cavity flow and the backward-facing step flow,show that numerical results are in good agreement with the published benchmark solutions.     

Large-eddy simulation of wing tip vortex in the near field

Large-eddy simulation with filtered-structure-function subgrid model and implicit large-eddy simulation (ILES without explicit subgrid model) using high-order accuracy and high resolution compact scheme have been performed on the tip vortex shedding from a rectangular half-wing with a NACA 0012 airfoil section and a rounded wing tip. The formation of the tip vortex and its initial development in the boundary layer and the near field wake are investigated and analysed in detail. The physics, why the tip vortex, which is originally turbulent in the boundary layer, is re-laminarised and becomes stable and laminar rapidly after shedding in the near field, is revealed by this simulation. The computation also shows the widely used second-order subgrid model is not consistent to six-order compact scheme and would degenerate the six-order LES results to second-order. Therefore, high-order schemes, grid refinement and six-order subgrid models are critical to LES approaches.     

COARSE-MESH-ACCURACY IMPROVEMENT OF BILINEAR Q4-PLANE ELEMENT BY THE COMBINED HYBRID FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

IntroductionByadding‘nodeless’incompatiblebubblemodesandpreservinggeometriccharacteristicofthevariationalprincipleinmechanics,thecombinedhybridmethod[1～4 ]remarkablelyenhancedcoarse_mesh_accuracyofconventionalquadrilateralelementsoflowerorder.ThequadrilateralplaneelasticelementCH(0_1 )proposedinRef.[3 ]isasuccessfulexample.Followingthegeometricpointofviewinmechanicscombinedwithmathematicalanalysis,anovelexpressionofthecombinedhybridvariationalprincipleisintroducedtoclarifyitsintrinsicmecha…     

Numerical simulation of flow‐induced noise using LES/SAS and Lighthill's acoustic analogy

We present a finite element (FE) formulation of Lighthill's acoustic analogy for the hybrid computation of noise generated by turbulent flows. In the present approach, the flow field is computed using large eddy simulation and scale adaptive simulation turbulence models. The acoustic propagation is obtained by solving the variational formulation of Lighthill's acoustic analogy with the FE method. In order to preserve the acoustic energy, we compute the inhomogeneous part of Lighthill's wave equation by applying the FE formulation on the fine flow grid. The resulting acoustic nodal loads are then conservatively interpolated to the coarser acoustic grid. Subsequently, the radiated acoustic field can be solved in both time and frequency domains. In the latter case, an enhanced perfectly matched layer technique is employed, allowing one to truncate the computational domain in the acoustic near field, without compromising the numerical solution. Our hybrid approach is validated by comparing the numerical results of the acoustic field induced by a corotating vortex pair with the corresponding analytical solution. To demonstrate the applicability of our scheme, we present full 3D numerical results for the computed acoustic field generated by the turbulent flow around square cylinder geometries. The sound pressure levels obtained compare well with measured values. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Space-Time GLS FEM with Direct Projection for 2D Advection-Diffusion Problem

A space-time scheme is an unconditional stable time-integration scheme and its domain is discretized into space-time slabs, which are employed to weakly enforce the continuity of the solution across the time slabs. It is applied in this study to two-dimensional advection-diffusion problems, and space-mesh adaptation is introduced. Mesh adaptation is a powerful scheme to reduce discretized errors: however, it is found that an error due to the projection between adaptive meshes in successive time slabs is another source of error. To reduce projection errors, the direct projection scheme for space-time method will be used in this study. Galerkin/Least Squares scheme is applied to prevent numerical instability due to the skew-symmetric term in the weak form of the advection-diffusion equation.     

A singular finite element for Stokes flow: The stick–slip problem

Abrupt changes in boundary conditions in viscous flow problems give rise to stress singularities. Ordinary finite element methods account effectively for the global solution but perform poorly near the singularity. In this paper we develop singular finite elements, similar in principle to the crack tip elements used in fracture mechanics, to improve the solution accuracy in the vicinity of the singular point and to speed up the rate of convergence. These special elements surround the singular point, and the corresponding field shape functions embody the form of the singularity. Because the pressure is singular, there is no pressure node at the singular point. The method performs well when applied to the stick–slip problem and gives more accurate results than those from refined ordinary finite element meshes.