Unstructured Mesh Manipulation in Response to Surface Deformation

Abstract

The Winslow elliptic smoothing equations have been shown to be effective for smoothing structured and unstructured computational meshes used in computational fluid dynamics applications. Although an implicit computational space is readily available for structured meshes, an explicitly constructed space is required for unstructured meshes. For a three-dimensional mesh, a method is presented where the original physical space is manipulated to generate virtual control volumes that can be employed as an effective computational space. A two-phase volume deformation scheme is implemented to effectively address mesh requirements for the viscous region near a no-slip slip surface. Region-limited smoothing is employed to fine tune the mesh smoothing to specific areas of interest and greatly increase the efficiency of the overall process. A tool called MeshGrind is used to demonstrate elliptic mesh manipulation and smoothing on practical engineering applications. Several test cases demonstrate Winslow elliptic smoothing on unstructured meshes including bioinspired flapping wing applications, design optimization, and dynamically deforming nozzles. The techniques presented here are shown to be effective for significant surface movements involving large mesh deformations in both viscous and inviscid regions.