Unstructured Mesh Movement and Viscous Mesh Generation for CFD-Based Design Optimization

The innovations proposed are twofold: 1) a robust unstructured mesh movement method able to handle isotropic (Euler), anisotropic (viscous), mixed element (hybrid) and generalized polyhedral unstructured grids for CFD applications, particularly, CFD-based design optimization, and 2) a robust method to automatically insert high quality anisotropic prismatic (viscous boundary layer) cells into any existing CFD mesh. All objectives in Phase I were met and all tasks were completed as proposed. The methods worked very well for both 2D and 3D geometries, for tetrahedral, hexahedral, and general polyhedral element types, and for the simple viscous meshes. In Phase II, we will extend the software into a general purpose package for use by NASA, other Government agencies, and commercial customers. We will implement our 3D viscous mesh generation method including a general solution-adaptive meshing capability. We will develop the software necessary to compute sensitivity derivatives of the mesh operations. Two important software design goals for our final Phase II software are ease-of-use and convenient access to its functionality. We will develop two types of user interfaces: graphical access (for the end-user) and programming access (for integration with flow solvers). We will assemble all of the methods developed in Phase II into a single, coherent, design-oriented, product-version code with extensive focus on incorporating a parallel processing capability into the software. The verification & validation plan will follow the industry-standard approach now used by commercial software houses and will include an extensive set of NASA-relevant test cases. The software will be documented and delivered to NASA. The Phase II software has significant potential for commercialization and sales in the non-Government sector.