Automated Mesh Generation and Solution Analysis of Arbitrary Airfoil Geometries

Abstract

The current work presents a novel computational fluid dynamics mesh generation methodology, which is able to generate high-quality meshes around complex airfoil geometries, while also having a high degree of automation in order to reduce the required user effort. Points are distributed along the airfoil surface based on the airfoil’s geometric features; then, an advancing-front method is used to build a mesh which will capture the airfoil’s boundary layer. Existing unstructured mesh generation tools are integrated into the methodology to construct the off-body and background regions of the mesh. An advanced computational fluid dynamics solver is then used to compute the flow over the airfoils. Several airfoils are examined, demonstrating the combined mesh generation and flow solver’s ability to handle various geometries, multiple-element airfoils, and various flow conditions including transonic flow. The results generated by this methodology compare favorably to prior experimental and computational results, validating the methodology to be used later in other research and product development settings.