Adaptive Navier Stokes Flow Solver for Aerospace Structures

Abstract : Predicting wind induced aerodynamic forces on aerospace structures is usually computationally expensive even for powerful computational facilities. For these unsteady computations, adaptive finite element technique may reduce the computer time and storage while keeping a desired accuracy. In this report, the p-version adaptive finite element method is implemented into a standard benchmark problem, the computational how around a circular cylinder, to compute aerodynamic forces. The error distribution for velocity is first estimated. Then, the polynomial order of the interpolation function is changed continuously in accordance with the changing of the error distribution. The second through fifth orders of polynomials are considered for the velocity in the adaptive method. One order less of polynomial is used for pressure. The benchmark problem of the flow around a circular cylinder with Reynolds number of 1000 is considered to study the performance.