An approach of dynamic mesh adaptation for simulating 3‐dimensional unsteady moving‐immersed‐boundary flows. (22nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Peng, B.; Zhou, C.H.
• Is Part Of: International journal for numerical methods in fluids. Volume 87:Number 4(2018)
• Page Start: 180
• Page End: 201
• Publication Date: 2018-01-22
• Subjects: hierarchical refining/coarsening -- immersed boundary -- mesh adaptation -- moving‐boundary flow -- tetrahedral mesh -- unsteady flow; Fluid dynamics -- Mathematics -- Periodicals; 532
• DOI: 10.1002/fld.4486
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0271-2091

Abstract

Abstract : This work is the first endeavor to combine dynamic adaptation of tetrahedral mesh with an immersed boundary method for simulating 3D moving‐boundary flows. The complexity of adaptive mesh generation is reduced by implementing the rule that the level difference of neighboring cells never exceeds 1. The geometric quality of mesh does not degrade as the mesh level increases and the error caused by each solution transferring from the old mesh to the new one is relatively small. Summary: In this paper, we present an approach of dynamic mesh adaptation for simulating complex 3‐dimensional incompressible moving‐boundary flows by immersed boundary methods. Tetrahedral meshes are adapted by a hierarchical refining/coarsening algorithm. Regular refinement is accomplished by dividing 1 tetrahedron into 8 subcells, and irregular refinement is only for eliminating the hanging points. Merging the 8 subcells obtained by regular refinement, the mesh is coarsened. With hierarchical refining/coarsening, mesh adaptivity can be achieved by adjusting the mesh only 1 time for each adaptation period. The level difference between 2 neighboring cells never exceeds 1, and the geometrical quality of mesh does not degrade as the level of adaptive mesh increases. A predictor‐corrector scheme is introduced to eliminate the phase lag between adapted mesh and unsteady solution. The error caused by each solution transferring from the old mesh to the new adapted one is small because most of the nodes on the 2 meshes are coincident. An immersed boundary method named local domain‐free discretization is employed to solve the flow equations. Several numerical experiments have been conducted for 3‐dimensional incompressible moving‐boundary flows. By using the present approach, the number of mesh nodes is reduced greatly while the accuracy of solution can be preserved.