PARALLEL FINITE-ELEMENT COMPUTATION OF MISSILE AERODYNAMICS

A flow simulation tool, developed by the authors at the Army HPC Resea rch Center, for compressible flows governed by the Navier-Stokes equat ions is used to study missile aerodynamics at supersonic speeds, high angles of attack and for large Reynolds numbers. The goal of this stud y is the evaluation of this Navier-Stokes computational technique for the prediction of separated flow fields around high-length-to-diameter (L/D) bodies. In particular, this paper addresses two issues: (i) tur bulence modelling with a finite element computational technique and (i i) efficient performance of the computational technique on two differe nt multiprocessor mainframes, the Thinking Machines CM-5 and GRAY T3D. The paper first provides a discussion of the Navier-Stokes computatio nal technique and the algorithm issues for achieving efficient perform ance on the CM-5 and T3D. Next, comparisons are shown between the comp utation and experiment for supersonic ramp flow to evaluate the suitab ility of the turbulence model. Following that, results of the computat ions for missile flow fields are shown for laminar and turbulent visco us effects. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.