Hybrid grid generation for viscous flow simulations in complex geometries

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we present a hybrid grid generation approach for viscous flow simulations by marching a surface triangulation on viscous walls along certain directions. Focuses are on the computing strategies used to determine the marching directions and distances since these strategies determine the quality of the resulting elements and the reliability of the meshing procedure to a large extent. With respect to marching directions, three strategies featured with different levels of efficiencies and robustness performance are combined to compute the initial normals at front nodes to balance the trade-off between efficiency and robustness. A novel weighted strategy is used in the normal smoothing scheme, which evidently reduces the possibility of early stop of front generation at complex corners. With respect to marching distances, the distance settings at concave and/or convex corners are locally adjusted to smooth the front shape at first; a further adjustment is then conducted for front nodes in the neighbourhood of gaps between opposite viscous boundaries. These efforts, plus other special treatments such as multi-normal generation and fast detection of local/global intersection, as a whole enable the setup of a hybrid mesher that could generate qualitied viscous grids for geometries with industry-level complexities.

Keywords

• Mesh generation
• Hybrid mesh
• Mesh quality
• Viscous flow