Automatic Mesh Adaptation Method for Aero-Thermal-Structural Design

In response to the request for proposal (RFP) STTR topic N23A-T001, describes mesh generation and adaptivity as “significant bottlenecks” for current high-fidelity CFD. While methods for producing high-quality meshes exist, they require nontrivial and frequent human intervention. Moreover, these techniques result in a disconnect between the parametric model and the output mesh representation, which hinders design analysis and optimization and incurs significant errors in predicting relevant physics. In view of this, Spectral Energies, LLC (SE) in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) propose to develop an adaptive meshing tool for aircraft that will autonomously generate aerodynamic and structural meshes for use in fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations. Specifically, SE will leverage MIT’s Solution Adaptive Numerical Simulator (SANS) to generate appropriate aerodynamic meshes in combination with an in-house adaptive structural mesh generation tool to address the needs of the Department of the Navy (DON). The meshing toolkit will be developed to be solver agnostic and demonstrated with CFD solvers like FUN3D and CREATE-AV Krestel and structural mechanics solvers like NASTRAN, ABAQUS, and ANSYS.