Adaptative finite element simulation of unsteady turbulent compressible flows on unstructured meshes

Abstract

The simulation of high-speed turbulent compressible flows using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) combined with the Characteristic-Based Split scheme (CBS) and a mesh adaptation strategy is presented in this work. A compressible dynamic Smagorinsky model is employed for the compressible LES model and the CBS scheme is employed in a Finite Element Method (FEM) context for space and time discretization using unstructured meshes. An accurate mesh adaptation scheme is frequently applied along the simulation including mesh refinement, mesh coarsening, edge or face swapping and a vertex smoothing technique in order to control the interpolation error and the mesh size. A feature-based error estimation is employed considering multi-scale and multi-metric intersection in order to capture turbulence effects. Two and three-dimensional applications are evaluated in order to investigate the capabilities of the present approach for evaluating external turbulent and compressible aerodynamics problems. The turbulent transonic flow around a circular cylinder in 2D and 3D domains and the turbulent supersonic flow past a blunt cylinder-flare model are investigated. Aerodynamic coefficients, frequency analysis and pressure distributions are compared against experimental data and other numerical simulations.