Automated Generation of Viscous CFD Grids for Increased Productivity of High Fidelity Aerodynamic Analysis

Viscous analysis is vital for a complete understanding of missile and UAV aerodynamic properties. A high fidelity aerodynamic analysis tool capable of predicting a flow field can significantly reduce design time and cost. The success of a CFD analysis is dependent on the quality of the grid. This proposal offers a technique for automatically generating grids suitable for viscous analysis on complex configurations. The region closest to the body is divided into zones and body-conforming grids are generated in these zones. In the outer region where convection dominates, unstructured meshes can be generated efficiently and fast. A transitional grid is used as a bridge between the regions. Viscous solvers can be used for the near-body region while the faster inviscid solver can be used in the farfield. Phase I established the proof-of-concept for such a tool. Phase II proposes to develop an automated viscous CFD grid generator with geometry recognition and dynamic adoption. It will be integrated with a graphical user interface and a visualization module. The tool will be tested using candidate missile and aircraft geometries provided by the Army. Enhancements such as parallelization of the code will be investigated for implementation in Phase III.