Application of adaptive mesh refinement method to complex flows in clean rooms

Abstract

The adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method is developed for three-dimensional turbulent complex flows in clean rooms using the finite volume method with a collocated grid arrangement. Clean rooms have many interesting and complex flow characteristics especially the secondary flows and the recirculation regions. The accurate numerical solution of the flows is important for the efficient design of clean rooms. The use of the conventional uniform grid requires such a high computational time and data storage capacity that they make computational fluid dynamics (CFD) less attractive for the design optimization. The AMR method is, therefore, applied by using the fine grid only in the required regions and using the coarse grid in the other regions. The velocity is chosen as the main parameter for the grid refinement because it is the most influential parameter in clean rooms. The results show that the present AMR method can reduce the computational time by eight times and the data storage requirement is only 37% of that using the conventional method, while the same order of accuracy can be maintained. The present AMR method is, therefore, proved to be a promising technique for solving three-dimensional turbulent complex flows in clean rooms.