SEMISTRUCTURED MESH GENERATION FOR 3-DIMENSIONAL NAVIER-STOKES CALCULATIONS

To mesh complex geometries efficiently, his the authors' view that a f ully unstructured mesh generation technique holds the most promise. Th ere are many papers detailing mesh generation and flow solutions for i nviscid flows on unstructured meshes; however, the computation of visc ous flows on unstructured meshes is a relatively new area of research, To accurately and efficiently compute viscous flows, highly stretched cells aligned in the proper direction are required in the viscous lay ers, Many of the currently available unstructured mesh generators prov ide at most a limited ability to create these cells. In the current wo rk a method that builds layers of highly stretched prismatic cells on an existing unstructured surface triangulation is described, The outer surface of this inflated triangulation provides a natural starting po int for the advancing front algorithm used to fill the interior with t etrahedra, Care is taken to limit the possibility of a crossed-over me sh in concave geometrical regions, If the mesh does cross over, then t he offending cells are removed, The combined algorithm of surface infl ation and advancing front is demonstrated on a range of internal and e xternal flow test eases. A limited number of how solutions are also pr esented.