High Order Mesh Curving and Geometry Access

Phase II effort will focus on enhancements to CurveMesh, interfacing with geometry through Project Geode and enabling surface splining of discrete geometry in a commercial mesh tool using SLUGS. CurveMesh will be modified to enable mixed order meshes and h-p adaptation in a parallel computing environment. A demonstration of the h-p adaption will be performed by loosely coupling CurveMesh with FUNSAFE (UTC FEM solver) on simple to realistic configurations. A schema will be developed and documented that allows geometry to mesh associativity to be defined for mesh operations downstream of the original mesh creation. The surface splining software, SLUGS, will be incorporated into the Graphical User Interface for Pointwise to permit users to create smooth analytic surfaces from discrete tessellated input geometry.

Phase II will produce usable tools that could be beneficial to NASA. The enhancement of CurveMesh is potentially beneficial to any NASA unstructured CFD FEM code that can use high-order meshes. FUN3D is under development to include a high order FEM flow solver. It?s core methods are similar to the FUNSAFE methods under development by Dr. Sreenivas. Enhancements to Project Geode with the planned schema will conceivably work with other meshing tools. Knowledge gained about implementing these new features into CurveMesh will be shared with the CFD community. FUN3D is again a tool that could use Project Geode for adaptive refinement and shape optimization. Phase II will lead to a possible commercial implementation of the CurveMesh methods in Pointwise. NASA engineers with Pointwise licenses will benefit from this implementation.

Phase II tools will also benefit other high order FEM flow solver developers by providing a means to create curved meshes for realistic geometries. The existing CurveMesh code has been used to create curved meshes for the 6th AIAA Drag Prediction Workshop, the 3rd High Lift Prediction Workshop and the 5th High Order CFD Workshop. Generated meshes have been analyzed by PyFR, CREATE-AV COFFE and others. Knowledge from Project Geode integration into CurveMesh will also benefit other researchers in need of geometry access. The possible commercialization of CurveMesh will benefit any Pointwise users in need of high order meshes.

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