Application of an automatic differentiation method to a 2D Navier-Stokes CFD code

Abstract

The ADIFOR2.0 automatic differentiator is applied to the FLOMGEM flow solver along with the grid generator HYPERG2. The FLOMGEM is an advanced Navier-Stokes CFD code for airfoil computations, which employs multigrid method. The HYPERG2 is a two-dimensional hyperbolic grid generator for generating a C-mesh. Both non-geometric and geometric sensitivity derivative codes are obtained. The sensitivity derivatives via automatic differentiation are presented and compared with divided difference generated derivatives. The study shows that an automatic differentiation method gives accurate derivative values in an efficient manner.