Abstract
A variable-order finite-element method for the solution of the steady nonlinear potential flow equations is presented. To achieve robustness and computational efficiency, the formulation is restricted to purely subsonic flow by means of a density Modification in sonic flow regions. A test case that triggers the activation of this modification is presented to show that the method yields pressure results that are very close to those obtained with a mature Euler solver while reducing computational cost by an order of magnitude. Linear and quadratic elements are implemented, and the substantial benefit of using higher-order elements is demonstrated by means of a mesh-convergence study, showing how the convergence of induced drag and neutral point location is improved by the use or quadratic elements. For large surface meshes, the computational cost is found to be competitive with a linearized-potential boundary-element code accelerated by panel clustering.
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