PARALLEL COMPUTATION OF INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOWS WITH COMPLEX GEOMETRIES

We present our numerical methods for the solution of large-scale incom pressible flow applications with complex geometries. These methods inc lude a stabilized finite element formulation of the Navier-Stokes equa tions, implementation of this formulation on parallel architectures su ch as the Thinking Machines CM-5 and the GRAY T3D, and automatic 3D me sh generation techniques based on Delaunay-Voronoi methods for the dis cretization of complex domains. Ail three of these methods are require d for the numerical simulation of most engineering applications involv ing fluid flow. We apply these methods to the simulation of airflow pa st an automobile and fluid-particle interactions. The simulation of ai rflow past an automobile is of very large scale with a high level of d etail and yielded many interesting airflow patterns which help in unde rstanding the aerodynamic characteristics of such vehicles. (C) 1997 b y John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.