A meshing technique for unsteady computational fluid dynamics solutions for rapidly changing boundaries and internal configurations
Authors
Advisors
Issue Date
Type
Keywords
Citation
Abstract
A method to generate structured meshes is developed that allows for rapid re-meshing of CFD problems that have rapidly changing boundaries or internal configurations. These types of problems have typically been solved by periodically, completely re-meshing the solution space or by attempting to adjust the position of the mesh where small and slow displacements are involved. For problems where rapid and/or large motion of the mesh is required, the re-meshing process can overwhelm the computational capabilities employed for the solution to the extent that many hours or even days of CPU time are required. The Reverse Meshing (RM) scheme developed in this paper makes use of the finite element method of solving truss-structure problems to convert the re-meshing problem into a simple algebraic solution that is easily and efficiently employed for continuous re-meshing of the solution space. By equating the points in the mesh to nodes in the finite element sense (which are the pins in the truss structure) and the interconnecting links in a mesh to the bar elements in a truss structure, the finite element solution of the truss structure can be used one-for-one to solve for the positions of the mesh points, using a simple matrix multiplication at each time increment in the CFD solution.