Viscous Cartesian Flow Solver with AMR Capabilities for Automated Flow Simulation

The computational grid generation process remains a troublesome bottleneck in development of aerodynamic databases for complex geometries and multi-body configurations. The ability of Cartesian-grid based methods to perform automatic mesh generation and dynamic mesh adaptation allows for substantially reduced manpower, time and cost. The advantages of octree-based Cartesian-mesh methods have been already demonstrated for inviscid flow simulations. The goal of this STTR project is to expand the Cartesian-mesh CFD methods for viscous flow simulations. During Phase I, we will explore several innovative methodologies including binary-tree based anisotropic mesh refinement near embedded boundaries, gas-kinetic scheme with embedded boundaries, a normal ray refinement technique and hybrid Cartesian/mesh-free methods. These approaches will be evaluated and ranked for efficient treatment of viscous flow effects near complex boundaries. The ease of implementation, accuracy, efficiency and generality will be investigated for selected test cases. Our framework will provide capabilities for direct simulations up to high Reynolds numbers with support of different turbulence models. The experience of the CFDRC team with Cartesian solvers will be enhanced by the Georgia Tech team to demonstrate the proposed innovations. During Phase II, we will fully implement, demonstrate and validate the prototype algorithms selected in Phase I with particular emphasis to Navy systems.