Low-Cost CFD-Based Analysis for Surface Mesh Interrogation and Refinement

Accurate flow calculation is crucial to the development and support of air platforms, and CFD has been successful at predicting aerodynamic performance for a variety of flows. The accuracy of CFD is governed by the quality of the surface mesh, and much work has been undertaken to automatically generate surface grids from CAD. Unfortunately, quality is quantified in terms of conformance to the surface rather than relevant fluid dynamics (i.e. flow gradients, boundary layer dynamics etc.), and users must undertake costly grid refinement studies to determine a suitable surface mesh for production work. This effort will develop a low cost CFD-based grid processing tool that can be used to guide the creation of suitable surface meshes by building upon the experience of Continuum Dynamics, Inc. (CDI) in developing fast reliable airframe design codes, panel methods and CFD solvers for DoD, NASA and industry. The proposed tool would be built around a low-cost CFD solver and would output guidance on local surface mesh correction and refinement based upon both surface topology and flow requirements/properties. Phase I will focus on technology demonstration and framework/interface definition to establish proof-of-concept and set the stage for follow-on development work.