Automatic off-body overset adaptive Cartesian mesh method based on an octree approach

Abstract

This paper describes a method for generating adaptive structured Cartesian grids within a near-body/off-body mesh partitioning framework for the flow simulation around complex geometries. The off-body Cartesian mesh generation derives from an octree structure, assuming each octree leaf node defines a structured Cartesian block. This enables one to take into account the large scale discrepancies in terms of resolution between the different bodies involved in the simulation, with minimum memory requirements. Two different conversions from the octree to Cartesian grids are proposed: the first one generates Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) type grid systems, and the second one generates abutting or minimally overlapping Cartesian grid set. We also introduce an algorithm to control the number of points at each adaptation, that automatically determines relevant values of the refinement indicator driving the grid refinement and coarsening. An application to a wing tip vortex computation assesses the capability of the method to capture accurately the flow features.