An immersed boundary solver for inviscid compressible flows

In this paper, a simple and efficient immersed boundary (IB) method is developed for the numerical simulation of inviscid compressible Euler equations. We propose a method based on coordinate transformation to calculate the unknowns of ghost points. In the present study, the body‐grid intercept points are used to build a complete bilinear (2‐D)/trilinear (3‐D) interpolation. A third‐order weighted essentially nonoscillation scheme with a new reference smoothness indicator is proposed to improve the accuracy at the extrema and discontinuity region. The dynamic blocked structured adaptive mesh is used to enhance the computational efficiency. The parallel computation with loading balance is applied to save the computational cost for 3‐D problems. Numerical tests show that the present method has second‐order overall spatial accuracy. The double Mach reflection test indicates that the present IB method gives almost identical solution as that of the boundary‐fitted method. The accuracy of the solver is further validated by subsonic and transonic flow past NACA2012 airfoil. Finally, the present IB method with adaptive mesh is validated by simulation of transonic flow past 3‐D ONERA M6 Wing. Global agreement with experimental and other numerical results are obtained.     

Anisotropic mesh adaptation: towards user‐independent,mesh‐independent and solver‐independent CFD. Part II. Structured grids

The present paper is the second article in a three‐part series on anisotropic mesh adaptation and its application to (2‐D) structured and unstructured meshes. In the first article, the theory was presented, the methodology detailed and brief examples given of the application of the method to both types of grids. The second part details the application of the mesh adaptation method to structured grids. The adaptation operations are restricted to mesh movement in order to avoid the creation of hanging nodes. Being based on a spring analogy with no restrictive orthogonality constraint, a wide grid motion is allowed. The adaptation process is first validated on analytical test cases and its high efficiency is shown on relevant transonic and supersonic benchmarks. These latter test cases are also solved on adapted unstructured grids to provide a reference for comparison studies. The third part of the series will demonstrate the capability of the methodology on 2‐D unstructured test cases. Copyright © 2002 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.     

Anisotropic goal‐oriented error analysis for a third‐order accurate CENO Euler discretization

In this paper, a central essentially non‐oscillatory approximation based on a quadratic polynomial reconstruction is considered for solving the unsteady 2D Euler equations. The scheme is third‐order accurate on irregular unstructured meshes. The paper concentrates on a method for a metric‐based goal‐oriented mesh adaptation. For this purpose, an a priori error analysis for this central essentially non‐oscillatory scheme is proposed. It allows us to get an estimate depending on the polynomial reconstruction error. As a third‐order error is not naturally expressed in terms of a metric, we propose a least‐square method to approach a third‐order error by a quadratic term. Then an optimization problem for the best mesh metric is obtained and analytically solved. The resulting mesh optimality system is discretized and solved using a global unsteady fixed‐point algorithm. The method is applied to an acoustic propagation benchmark.     

High‐order numerical simulations of flow‐induced noise

In this paper, the flow/acoustics splitting method for predicting flow‐generated noise is further developed by introducing high‐order finite difference schemes. The splitting method consists of dividing the acoustic problem into a viscous incompressible flow part and an inviscid acoustic part. The incompressible flow equations are solved by a second‐order finite volume code EllipSys2D/3D. The acoustic field is obtained by solving a set of acoustic perturbation equations forced by flow quantities. The incompressible pressure and velocity form the input to the acoustic equations. The present work is an extension of our acoustics solver, with the introduction of high‐order schemes for spatial discretization and a Runge–Kutta scheme for time integration. To achieve low dissipation and dispersion errors, either Dispersion‐Relation‐Preserving (DRP) schemes or optimized compact finite difference schemes are used for the spatial discretizations. Applications and validations of the new acoustics solver are presented for benchmark aeroacoustic problems and for flow over an NACA 0012 airfoil. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient implicit mesh‐less method for compressible flow calculations

A dual‐time implicit mesh‐less scheme is presented for calculation of compressible inviscid flow equations. The Taylor series least‐square method is used for approximation of spatial derivatives at each node which leads to a central difference discretization. Several convergence acceleration techniques such as local time stepping, enthalpy damping and residual smoothing are adopted in this approach. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated by flow computations around single and multi‐element airfoils at subsonic, transonic and supersonic flow conditions. Results are presented which indicate good agreements with other reliable finite‐volume results. The computational time is considerably reduced when using the proposed mesh‐less method compared with the explicit mesh‐less and finite‐volume schemes using the same point distributions. Copyright © 2010 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.     

Robust design in aerodynamics using third‐order sensitivity analysis based on discrete adjoint. Application to quasi‐1D flows

In this paper, the second‐order second moment approach, coupled with an adjoint‐based steepest descent algorithm, for the solution of the so‐called robust design problem in aerodynamics is proposed. Because the objective function for the robust design problem comprises first‐order and second‐order sensitivity derivatives with respect to the environmental parameters, the application of a gradient‐based method , which requires the sensitivities of this function with respect to the design variables, calls for the computation of third‐order mixed derivatives. To compute these derivatives with the minimum CPU cost, a combination of the direct differentiation and the discrete adjoint variable method is proposed. This is presented for the first time in the relevant literature and is the most efficient among other possible schemes on condition that the design variables are much more than the environmental ones; this is definitely true in most engineering design problems. The proposed approach was used for the robust design of a duct, assuming a quasi‐1D flow model; the coordinates of the Bézier control points parameterizing the duct shape are used as design variables, whereas the outlet Mach number and the Darcy–Weisbach friction coefficient are used as environmental ones. The extension to 2D and 3D flow problems, after developing the corresponding direct differentiation and adjoint variable methods and software, is straightforward. Copyright © 2011 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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Solution of the shallow‐water equations using an adaptive moving mesh method

This paper extends an adaptive moving mesh method to multi‐dimensional shallow water equations (SWE) with source terms. The algorithm is composed of two independent parts: the SWEs evolution and the mesh redistribution. The first part is a high‐resolution kinetic flux‐vector splitting (KFVS) method combined with the surface gradient method for initial data reconstruction, and the second part is based on an iteration procedure. In each iteration, meshes are first redistributed by a variational principle and then the underlying numerical solutions are updated by a conservative‐interpolation formula on the resulting new mesh. Several test problems in one‐ and two‐dimensions with a general geometry are computed using the proposed moving mesh algorithm. The computations demonstrate that the algorithm is efficient for solving problems with bore waves and their interactions. The solutions with higher resolution can be obtained by using a KFVS scheme for the SWEs with a much smaller number of grid points than the uniform mesh approach, although we do not treat technically the bed slope source terms in order to balance the source terms and flux gradients. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mesh adaptation for large‐eddy simulations in complex geometries

Large‐eddy simulation (LES) consists in explicitly simulating the large scales of the fluid motion and in modeling the influence of the smallest scales. Thanks to the steady growth of computational resources, LES can now be used to simulate realistic systems with complex geometries. However, when LES is used in such complex geometries, an adequate mesh has to be determined to perform valid LES. In this work, a strategy is proposed to assess the quality of a given mesh and to adapt it locally. Two different criteria are used as mesh adaptation criteria. The first criterion is defined to ensure a correct discretization of the mean field, whereas the second criterion is defined to ensure enough explicit resolution of turbulent scales motions. The use of both criteria is shown in canonical flow cases. As a second part of this work, a numerical strategy for mesh adaptation in high‐performance computing context is proposed by coupling the flow solver, YALES2, and the remeshing library, MMG3D, for massively parallel computations. This coupling enables an efficient and parallel remeshing of grids alleviating any memory or performance issues encountered in sequential tools. This strategy is finally applied to the simulation of the isothermal flow in a complex meso‐combustor to demonstrate the applicability of the adaptation methodology to complex turbulent flows. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anisotropic mesh adaptation: towards user‐independent,mesh‐independent and solver‐independent CFD. Part I: general principles

The present paper is the lead article in a three‐part series on anisotropic mesh adaptation and its applications to structured and unstructured meshes. A flexible approach is proposed and tested on two‐dimensional, inviscid and viscous, finite volume and finite element flow solvers, over a wide range of speeds. The directional properties of an interpolation‐based error estimate, extracted from the Hessian of the solution, are used to control the size and orientation of mesh edges. The approach is encapsulated into an edge‐based anisotropic mesh optimization methodology (MOM), which uses a judicious sequence of four local operations: refinement, coarsening, edge swapping and point movement, to equi‐distribute the error estimate along all edges, without any recourse to remeshing. The mesh adaptation convergence of the MOM loop is carefully studied for a wide variety of test cases. The mesh optimization generic coupling of MOM with finite volume and finite element flow solvers is shown to yield the same final mesh no matter what the starting point is. It is also shown that on such optimized meshes, the need for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) stabilization artifices, such as upwinding or artificial viscosity, are drastically reduced, if not altogether eliminated, in most well‐posed formulations. These two conclusions can be considered significant steps towards mesh‐independent and solver‐independent CFD. The structure of the three‐part series is thus, 1, general principles; 2, methodology and applications to structured and unstructured grids; 3, applications to three‐dimensional flows. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unstructured/structured multi‐layer hybrid grid method and its application

A multi‐layer hybrid grid method is constructed to simulate complex flow field around 2‐D and 3‐D configuration. The method combines Cartesian grids with structured grids and triangular meshes to provide great flexibility in discretizing a domain. We generate the body‐fitted structured grids near the wall surface and the Cartesian grids for the far field. In addition, we regard the triangular meshes as an adhesive to link each grid part. Coupled with a tree data structure, the Cartesian grid is generated automatically through a cell‐cutting algorithm. The grid merging methodology is discussed, which can smooth hybrid grids and improve the quality of the grids. A cell‐centred finite volume flow solver has been developed in combination with a dual‐time stepping scheme. The flow solver supports arbitrary control volume cells. Both inviscid and viscous flows are computed by solving the Euler and Navier–Stokes equations. The above methods and algorithms have been validated on some test cases. Computed results are presented and compared with experimental data. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A higher‐order unsplit 2D direct Eulerian finite volume method for two‐material compressible flows based on the MOOD paradigms

A higher‐order unsplit multi‐dimensional discretization of the diffuse interface model for two‐material compressible flows proposed by R. Saurel, F. Petitpas and R. A. Berry in 2009 is developed. The proposed higher‐order method is based on the concepts of the Multidimensional Optimal Order Detection (MOOD) method introduced in three recent papers for single‐material flows. The first‐order unsplit multi‐dimensional Finite Volume discretization presented by SPB serves as foundation for the development of the higher‐order unlimited schemes. Specific detection criteria along with a novel decrementing algorithm for the MOOD method are designed in order to deal with the complexity of multi‐material flows. Numerically, we compare errors and computational times on several 1D problems (stringent shock tube and cavitation problems) computed on 2D meshes with the second‐ and fourth‐order MOOD methods using a classical MUSCL method as reference. Several simulations of a 2D shocked R22 bubble in the air are also presented on Cartesian and unstructured meshes with the second‐ and fourth‐order MOOD methods, and qualitative comparisons confirm the conclusions obtained with 1D problems. These numerical results demonstrate the robustness of the MOOD approach and the interest of using more than second‐order methods even for locally singular solutions of complex physics models. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved ghost‐cell immersed boundary method for compressible flow simulations

This study presents an improved ghost‐cell immersed boundary approach to represent a solid body in compressible flow simulations. In contrast to the commonly used approaches, in the present work, ghost cells are mirrored through the boundary described using a level‐set method to farther image points, incorporating a higher‐order extra/interpolation scheme for the ghost‐cell values. A sensor is introduced to deal with image points near the discontinuities in the flow field. Adaptive mesh refinement is used to improve the representation of the geometry efficiently in the Cartesian grid system. The improved ghost‐cell method is validated against four test cases: (a) double Mach reflections on a ramp, (b) smooth Prandtl–Meyer expansion flows, (c) supersonic flows in a wind tunnel with a forward‐facing step, and (d) supersonic flows over a circular cylinder. It is demonstrated that the improved ghost‐cell method can reach the accuracy of second order in L¹ norm and higher than first order in L^∞ norm. Direct comparisons against the cut‐cell method demonstrate that the improved ghost‐cell method is almost equally accurate with better efficiency for boundary representation in high‐fidelity compressible flow simulations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order finite difference method for numerical simulations of supersonic turbulent flows

This paper describes a new class of three‐dimensional finite difference schemes for high‐speed turbulent flows in complex geometries based on the high‐order monotonicity‐preserving (MP) method. Simulations conducted for various 1D, 2D, and 3D problems indicate that the new high‐order MP schemes can preserve sharp changes in the flow variables without spurious oscillations and are able to capture the turbulence at the smallest computed scales. Our results also indicate that the MP method has less numerical dissipation and faster grid convergence than the weighted essentially non‐oscillatory method. However, both of these methods are computationally more demanding than the COMP method and are only used for the inviscid fluxes. To reduce the computational cost for reacting flows, the scalar equations are solved by the COMP method, which is shown to yield similar results to those obtained by the MP in supersonic turbulent flows with strong shock waves. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.