Aerospace Applications of Solution Adaptive Finite Element Analysis

Computer Aided Geometric Design, Elsevier, Vol 12, pp.709-731, 1995

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

D. L. Marcum
Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation, Mississippi State University, P.O. Drawer 6176, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA.

N. P. Weatherill
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Wales, Swansea S42 8PP, UK

Abstract
A solution adaptive finite element procedure for calculating complex flow fields about complicated aerospace configurations is presented. The procedure includes a new adaptive grid generation method based on a Delaunay triangulation scheme combined with adaptation sources. With this method, high-quality solution adapted grids can be generated efficiently. Techniques are presented for obtaining adaptation sources which automatically detect relevant features in a flow field. Computed solutions are presented which successfully demonstrate the overall procedure for a variety of aerospace configurations.