High Order Mesh Curving and Geometry Access

During Phase I, our effort will focus on three software tools; CurveMesh, Geode and SLUGS. These tools will be developed in anticipation of use in the commercial mesh generation software Pointwise and consideration will be given to requirements for parallel implementation in a distributed computing environment. A new initialization procedure will be implemented in CurveMesh to provide more robust starting perturbation field prior to the optimization based smoothing scheme placing points in final position for optimal cell quality of the curved mesh. Access to the geometry kernel, Geode, will be provided through an API for operations required for mesh curving and mesh adaptation. Communication protocols will be developed to permit flow solver to prescribe mesh sizing information to mesh generation programs for h-p adaption. And discrete surface tessellation will be process using SLUGS to create smooth splined surfaces.

Phase I 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. Its core methods are similar to the FUNSAFE methods developed by Dr. Newman. The Geode API will work with geometry provided in a Pointwise proprietary file format. This file can be exported by any Pointwise user and is potentially beneficial to any NASA tool that needs access to geometry. FUN3D is again a tool that could use Geode for adaptive refinement and shape optimization. Phase II will result in a commercial implementation of the CurveMesh methods in Pointwise. NASA engineers with Pointwise licenses will benefit from this implementation.

Phase I 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 and the 3rd High Lift Prediction Workshop. Generated meshes have been analyzed by PyFR, CREATE-AV COFFE and others. The Geode API will also benefit other researchers in need of geometry access who have valid Pointwise licenses. The commercialization of CurveMesh will benefit any Pointwise users in need of high order meshes.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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