High-Order CFD Solver with Automated Mesh Generation and Refinement for Hypersonics

We propose to develop an efficient, high-order, low-dissipation CFD technology with automated solution-adaptive mesh generation and refinement capability for hypersonic flows. The approach is to improve the fidelity of an existing hypersonic CFD solver, the Kestrel suite, by implementing an innovative high-order U-MUSCL scheme and developing a non-invasive automatic mesh generation and adaptive refinement capability. The proposed scheme can achieve up to 4th-order accuracy with only 10% overhead. One order-of-magnitude (10X) increase in resolvable scales has been demonstrated using this innovative scheme on transition-to-turbulence problems, which are crucial in capturing key features of hypersonic flight. Phase I will first implement the proposed high-order scheme into Kestrel and verify the 10X increase in performance. A non-invasive scripted automatic adaptive meshing capability by leveraging the software APIs within Kestrel will be developed to provide an online AMR capability for Kestrel/KCFD. The accuracy and computational cost of the proposed automated method for a 3D problem will be demonstrated. Phase II will further develop and validate the high-order scheme and will implement a fully integrated automated simulation approach for computing 3D hypersonic base flows for transition prediction.Ý