Curved boundary layer meshing for adaptive viscous flow simulations

Abstract

This paper presents an adaptive mesh control procedure suitable for use with high-order finite element methods to solve viscous flow problems. The procedure presented is an appropriate combination of anisotropic and boundary layer mesh adaptation that accounts for the need to use curved mesh edges and faces to maintain the required geometric approximation and mesh gradation within the boundary layers. The paper first discusses the mesh adaptation tools needed to create effective adapted meshes for higher-order viscous flow simulations. Consideration is then given to an overview of the individual mesh adaptation components that are combined to create such meshes. Finally, example results are given to demonstrate the importance of the techniques in accurate computation of physical quantities of interest and to also show the effectiveness of the developed procedures in dealing with domains of arbitrary geometric complexity.