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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2015

Tetrahedral-Mesh Simulation of Turbulent Flows with the Space-Time Conservative Schemes

Direct numerical simulations of turbulent flows are predominantly carried out using structured, hexahedral meshes despite decades of development in unstructured mesh methods. Tetrahedral meshes offer ease of mesh generation around complex geometries and the potential of an orientation free grid that would provide un-biased small-scale dissipation and more accurate intermediate scale solutions. However, due to the lack of consistent multi-dimensional numerical formulations in conventional schemes for triangular and tetrahedral meshes at the cell interfaces, numerical issues exist when flow discontinuities or stagnation regions are present. The space-time conservative conservation element solution element (CESE) method - due to its Riemann-solver-free shock capturing capabilities, non-dissipative baseline schemes, and flux conservation in time as well as space - has the potential to more accurately simulate turbulent flows using unstructured tetrahedral meshes. To pave the way towards accurate simulation of shock/turbulent boundary-layer interaction, a series of wave and shock interaction benchmark problems that increase in complexity, are computed in this paper with triangular/tetrahedral meshes. Preliminary computations for the normal shock/turbulence interactions are carried out with a relatively coarse mesh, by direct numerical simulations standards, in order to assess other effects such as boundary conditions and the necessity of a buffer domain. The results indicate that qualitative agreement with previous studies can be obtained for flows where, strong shocks co-exist along with unsteady waves that display a broad range of scales, with a relatively compact computational domain and less stringent requirements for grid clustering near the shock. With the space-time conservation properties, stable solutions without any spurious wave reflections can be obtained without a need for buffer domains near the outflow/farfield boundaries. Computational results for the isotropic turbulent flow decay, at a relatively high turbulent Mach number, show a nicely behaved spectral decay rate for medium to high wave numbers. The high-order CESE schemes offer very robust solutions even with the presence of strong shocks or widespread shocklets. The explicit formulation in conjunction with a close to unity theoretical upper Courant number bound has the potential to offer an efficient numerical framework for general compressible turbulent flow simulations with unstructured meshes.

Chang, Chau-Lyan↗
DOE OSTI2026

Systematic Evaluation of Atmospheric Forcing, Surface Datasets, and Mesh Effects on Kilometer-Scale Land Surface and River Modeling

Earth system models are advancing toward kilometer-scale resolution to capture local climate impacts and extremes. High-resolution land and river modeling depends on multiple factors, including mesh, surface datasets, and atmospheric forcing, but their relative effects at kilometer scales remain unquantified. We evaluated five Energy Exascale Earth System Model land and river configurations over the Mid-Atlantic region using two mesh (1/8° structured versus variable-resolution unstructured mesh), two surface datasets (default versus newly developed), and three atmospheric forcings (NLDAS2, MSWX, GSWP). Evaluation against satellite, reanalysis, and in situ benchmarks across water, energy, and carbon cycles quantifies how these factors affect model performance. Forcing selection produces the largest bias reductions (12-99% across variables), followed by surface datasets (7-75%) and mesh (up to 21%). Forcing effects vary by variable, with MSWX reducing biases for snow water equivalent, evapotranspiration, albedo, temperature, and gross primary productivity, GSWP for snow cover and runoff, and NLDAS for soil moisture and streamflow. The use of newly developed surface datasets improves gross primary productivity (58% bias reduction) and evapotranspiration but increase soil moisture and albedo biases due to current modeling limitations. Variable-resolution unstructured mesh improves the simulation of small-basin streamflow through better capturing drainage networks, though mesh minimally affects other land variables. These findings provide important guidance for high-resolution modeling development and actionable science.

Land and River modeling↗
NASA NTRS1998

Euler Calculations at Off-Design Conditions for an Inlet of Inward Turning RBCC-SSTO Vehicle

The inviscid performance of an inward turning inlet design is calculated computationally for the first time. Hypersonic vehicle designs based on the inward turning inlets have been shown analytically to have increased effective specific impulse and lower heat load than comparably designed vehicles with two-dimensional inlets. The inward turning inlets are designed inversely from inviscid stream surfaces of known flow fields. The computational study is performed on a Mach 12 inlet design to validate the performance predicted by the design code (HAVDAC) and calculate its off-design Mach number performance. The three-dimensional Euler equations are solved for Mach 4, 8, and 12 using a software package called SAM, which consists of an unstructured mesh generator (SAMmesh), a three-dimensional unstructured mesh flow solver (SAMcfd), and a CAD-based software (SAMcad). The computed momentum averaged inlet throat pressure is within 6% of the design inlet throat pressure. The mass-flux at the inlet throat is also within 7 % of the value predicted by the design code thereby validating the accuracy of the design code. The off-design Mach number results show that flow spillage is minimal, and the variation in the mass capture ratio with Mach number is comparable to an ideal 2-D inlet. The results from the inviscid flow calculations of a Mach 12 inward turning inlet indicate that the inlet design has very good on and off-design performance which makes it a promising design candidate for future air-breathing hypersonic vehicles.

Takashima, N.↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Block-Structured Adaptive Mesh Framework to Solve Radiation Transfer Equation in Irregular Embedded Geometries

Radiation transport arises in various scientific, industrial, and medical fields, and understanding its effect in applications is needed to make accurate predictions, safety assessments and performance optimizations. Solving the Radiation Transport Equation (RTE) is challenging due to its integro-differential nature, which involves both differential and integral terms. The differential term describes the change in radiation intensity due to absorption and emission, while the integral term accounts for scattering. The accurate modeling of radiation is further complicated in many applications due to the complex, irregular geometries. Various methods exist for solving the RTE, including the zonal, Monte Carlo, spherical harmonics, discrete ordinates, and finite volume methods. Traditional mesh-based approaches, which rely on structured or unstructured meshes, struggle with irregular geometries due to: a) the difficulty of conforming structured grids to irregular domains, b) challenges in enforcing boundary conditions correctly, and c) the additional computational cost of unstructured mesh methods. This work presents a second-order accurate method for solving the RTE in irregular geometries. The radiation intensity is discretized using the finite-volume method in both spatial and angular directions on regular Cartesian grid blocks. Leveraging the block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) framework provided by AMReX, our method refines the grid locally to reduce spatial discretization error, ensuring a converged numerical solution while minimizing computational costs elsewhere. A two-stage deferred correction approach is employed: First, a first-order discretization on grid blocks is solved using an algebraic multigrid method in HYPRE. Second, a correction term is applied explicitly to achieve second-order accuracy. The correction term is calculated by approximating the radiation flux on cell faces using a Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) scheme. This approach ensures quick convergence of the multigrid method while preserving higher-order accuracy of the numerical solution. Irregular geometries are resolved as embedded boundaries (EB), resulting in both cut cells and regular cells. In cut cells, we modify the fluxes using face fractions and incorporate additional contributions from EB boundary conditions. To ensure higher-order convergence near the EB interface, the correction term is modified by interpolating the radiation intensity to fictitious ghost points. The implementation takes advantage of modern supercomputers by leveraging AMReX’sMPI/X parallelization strategy where X can be MPI or a GPU accelerator including CUDA, HIP and DPC++. We validate our solver using classical test cases, both with and without EB, demonstrating accuracy and efficiency. Additionally, we analyze the impact of adaptive mesh refinement on solution accuracy and computational cost, highlighting the advantages of our approach for high-resolution radiation transport simulations.

computational fluid dynamics (CFD)↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Space-Time Conservative Schemes for Large-Scale, Time-Accurate Flow Simulations with Tetrahedral Meshes

Despite decades of development of unstructured mesh methods, high-fidelity time-accurate simulations are still predominantly carried out on structured, or unstructured hexahedral meshes by using high-order finite-difference, weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO), or hybrid schemes formed by their combinations. In this work, the space-time conservation element solution element (CESE) method is used to simulate several flow problems including supersonic jet/shock interaction and its impact on launch vehicle acoustics, and direct numerical simulations of turbulent flows using tetrahedral meshes. This paper provides a status report for the continuing development of the space-time conservation element solution element (CESE) numerical and software framework under the Revolutionary Computational Aerosciences (RCA) project. Solution accuracy and large-scale parallel performance of the numerical framework is assessed with the goal of providing a viable paradigm for future high-fidelity flow physics simulations.

Venkatachari, Balaji Shankar↗
NASA NTRS2018

Tetrahedral-Mesh Simulations of Shock-Turbulence Interaction

Despite decades of development of unstructured mesh methods, direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent flows are still predominantly performed on structured or unstructured hexahedral meshes with high-order finite-difference methods, weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) schemes, or hybrid schemes formed by their combinations. Tetrahedral meshes offer easy mesh generation and adaptation around complex geometries and the potential of an orientation-free grid that would benefit the isotropic nature of small-scale dissipation, as well as the solution accuracy of intermediate scales. To advance the state of the art of unstructured-mesh simulation capabilities for shock/turbulence interaction, DNS using pure tetrahedral meshes are carried out with the space-time conservation element, solution element (CESE) method in this research. By its design, the CESE method is constructed based on a non-dissipative scheme and is a genuinely multidimensional numerical framework that is free from the use of an approximate Riemann-solver. The numerical framework also provides the ability to add numerical dissipation (the nondissipative scheme acts as the reference state like that of the reversible state in thermodynamics) when needed (with justification from mathematics/physics). The above-mentioned features along with the CESE method's consistent shock-capturing approach and strong enforcement of flux conservation in spacetime offers a novel method to accurately simulate turbulent flows and their interaction with shocks using tetrahedral meshes. Two canonical problems, namely, isotropic turbulence interaction with a normal shock and a Mach 2.9 turbulent boundary layer flow over a 24deg compression corner are investigated in this study. Computational results show reasonably good agreement with experimental data and results from structured-mesh, high-order simulations available in the literature. Successful validation of these canonical problems demonstrated here paves the way for future high-fidelity supersonic flow simulations involving complex-geometries.

Venkatachari, Balaji Shankar↗
NASA NTRS1989

Unsteady Euler algorithm with unstructured dynamic mesh for complex-aircraft aeroelastic analysis

A finite-volume unstructured-grid FEM scheme with multistage Runge-Kutta time stepping is applied to the three-dimensional time-dependent Euler equations for inviscid flows on complex aircraft configurations undergoing structural deformation. The derivation of the model, the solution procedure, and the computer implementation are described, and results are presented graphically for a NASA Langley supersonic fighter aircraft model in steady and unsteady (harmonic oscillation in complete-vehicle bending mode) flow regimes. Good agreement between FEM predictions and experimental data is demonstrated.

Batina, John T.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Mesh generation for the computation of flowfields over complex aerodynamic shapes

Methods are presented for generating both structured and unstructured meshes about three dimensional shapes. Results for both approaches are shown and their strengths and weaknesses are compared. For relatively simple configurations, such as wing/body combinations, a structured mesh is the preferred approach. For a complete aircraft, however, structured meshes lack the necessary flexibility, but unstructured meshes do offer the opportunity to treat completely general configurations with relative ease.

Baker, Timothy↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Influence of Adaptive Mesh Refinement on the Prediction of Vortex Interactions about a Generic Missile Airframe

The complex interaction of forebody and wing vortices significantly impacts missile aerodynamics. The formation of these vortices involves smooth regions of the geometry or geometric discontinuities like leading edges, trailing edges, tips, and corners. Regions of supersonic flow and complex shock topologies interact with boundary layers and vortices. Smooth-body separation and 3D viscous effects strain current Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) techniques. The quantification and control of discretization error is critical to obtaining reliable simulation results and often turbulence model assessments are made in the presence of unquantified (and potentially large) discretization errors. Two mesh adaptation schemes are applied to steady RANS simulations. Multiscale unstructured mesh adaptation is applied to control interpolation error estimates of the Mach field, which resolves boundary layers, vortices, and shocks. A dual-mesh approach with overset communication is applied between an expert-crafted near-body unstructured mesh and an adaptive off-body Cartesian mesh refined with Q-criterion scaled by the strain tensor magnitude. A generic missile configuration is examined in a supersonic flow field to show the interaction of mesh adaptation and turbulence model. Turbulence model modifications for rotational correction and a quadratic constitutive relationship show a strong influence on adaptive mesh refinement and predicted rolling moment.

slender body aerodynamics↗
NASA NTRS1990

A structured and unstructured remeshing method for high speed flows

An adaptive remeshing method using both triangular and quadrilateral elements suitable for high speed flows is presented. For inviscid flows the method generates completely unstructured meshes. For viscous flows the boundary layer edge is identified adaptively and a structured mesh is generated in the boundary layer, and an unstructured mesh is generated in the inviscid region. Examples of inviscid and viscous mesh adaptations for high speed flows are presented. A comparison is made between first order and higher order finite element algorithms when used in association with the remeshing method.

Vemaganti, Gururaja R.↗
NASA NTRS1993

A hybrid finite element-boundary integral for the analysis of cavity-backed antennas of arbitrary shape

This is the final report on this project which was concerned with the analysis of cavity-backed antennas and more specifically spiral antennas. The project was a continuation of a previous analysis, which employed rectangular brick elements, and was, thus, restricted to planar rectangular patch antennas. A total of five reports were submitted under this project and we expect that at least four journal papers will result from the research described in these reports. The abstracts of the four previous reports are included. The first of the reports (028918-1-T) is over 75 pages and describes the general formulation using tetrahedral elements and the computer program. Report 028918-2-T was written after the completion of the computer program and reviews the capability of the analysis and associated software for planar circular rectangular patches and for a rectangular planar spiral. Measurements were also done at the University of Michigan and at Mission Research Corp. for the purpose of validating the software. We are pleased to acknowledge a partial support from Mission Research Corp. in carrying out the work described in this report. The third report (028918-3-T) describes the formulation and partial validation (using 2D data) for patch antennas on a circular platform. The 3D validation and development of the formulation for patch antennas on circular platforms is still in progress. The fourth report (028918-4-T) is basically an invited journal paper which will appear in the 'J. Electromagnetic Waves and Applications' in early 1994. It describes the application of the finite element method in electromagnetics and is primarily based on our work here at U-M. This final report describes the culmination of our efforts in characterizing complex cavity-backed antennas on planar platforms. The report describes for the first time the analysis of non-planar spirals and non-rectangular slot antennas as well as traditional planar patch antennas. The comparisons between measurements and calculations are truly impressive. Another unique aspect of this work is the incorporation of the FFT as part of the BiCG solver by overlaying a structured triangular mesh over the unstructured mesh. The implementation of this BiCG-FFT solution algorithm is important in minimizing the CPU and storage requirements. This final report will be submitted for publication in a refereed journal.

Gong, Jian↗
NASA NTRS1995

Adaptive unstructured triangular mesh generation and flow solvers for the Navier-Stokes equations at high Reynolds number

A method for generating high quality unstructured triangular grids for high Reynolds number Navier-Stokes calculations about complex geometries is described. Careful attention is paid in the mesh generation process to resolving efficiently the disparate length scales which arise in these flows. First the surface mesh is constructed in a way which ensures that the geometry is faithfully represented. The volume mesh generation then proceeds in two phases thus allowing the viscous and inviscid regions of the flow to be meshed optimally. A solution-adaptive remeshing procedure which allows the mesh to adapt itself to flow features is also described. The procedure for tracking wakes and refinement criteria appropriate for shock detection are described. Although at present it has only been implemented in two dimensions, the grid generation process has been designed with the extension to three dimensions in mind. An implicit, higher-order, upwind method is also presented for computing compressible turbulent flows on these meshes. Two recently developed one-equation turbulence models have been implemented to simulate the effects of the fluid turbulence. Results for flow about a RAE 2822 airfoil and a Douglas three-element airfoil are presented which clearly show the improved resolution obtainable.

Ashford, Gregory A.↗
NASA NTRS1989

A mesh regeneration method using quadrilateral and triangular elements for compressible flows

An adaptive remeshing method using both triangular and quadrilateral elements suitable for high-speed viscous flows is presented. For inviscid flows, the method generates completely unstructured meshes. For viscous flows, structured meshes are generated for boundary layers, and unstructured meshes are generated for inviscid flow regions. Examples of inviscid and viscous adaptations for high-speed flows are presented.

Vemaganti, G. R.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Unsteady Euler airfoil solutions using unstructured dynamic meshes

Two algorithms for the solution of the time-dependent Euler equations are presented for unsteady aerodynamic analysis of oscillating airfoils. Both algorithms were developed for use on an unstructured grid made up of triangles. The first flow solver involves a Runge-Kutta time-stepping scheme with a finite-volume spatial discretization that reduces to central differencing on a rectangular mesh. The second flow solver involves a modified Euler time-integration scheme with an upwind-biased spatial discretization based on the flux-vector splitting of Van Leer. The paper presents descriptions of the Euler solvers and dynamic mesh algorithm along with results which assess the capability.

Batina, John T.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Turbulent flow calculations using unstructured and adaptive meshes

A method of efficiently computing turbulent compressible flow over complex two dimensional configurations is presented. The method makes use of fully unstructured meshes throughout the entire flow-field, thus enabling the treatment of arbitrarily complex geometries and the use of adaptive meshing techniques throughout both viscous and inviscid regions of flow-field. Mesh generation is based on a locally mapped Delaunay technique in order to generate unstructured meshes with highly-stretched elements in the viscous regions. The flow equations are discretized using a finite element Navier-Stokes solver, and rapid convergence to steady-state is achieved using an unstructured multigrid algorithm. Turbulence modeling is performed using an inexpensive algebraic model, implemented for use on unstructured and adaptive meshes. Compressible turbulent flow solutions about multiple-element airfoil geometries are computed and compared with experimental data.

Mavriplis, Dimitri J.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Turbulent flow calculations using unstructured and adaptive meshes

A method of efficiently computing turbulent compressible flow over complex two dimensional configurations is presented. The method makes use of fully unstructured meshes throughout the entire flow field, thus enabling the treatment of arbitrarily complex geometries and the use of adaptive meshing techniques throughout both viscous and inviscid regions of the flow field. Mesh generation is based on a locally mapped Delaunay technique in order to generate unstructured meshes with highly-stretched elements in the viscous regions. The flow equations are discretized using a finite element Navier-Stokes solver, and rapid convergence to steady-state is achieved using an unstructured multigrid algorithm. Turbulence modeling is performed using an inexpensive algebraic model, implemented for use on unstructured and adaptaive meshes. Compressible turbulent flow solutions about multiple-element airfoil geometries are computed and compared with expeirmental data.

Mavriplis, Dimitri J.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Multi-dimensional Upwind Fluctuation Splitting Scheme with Mesh Adaption for Hypersonic Viscous Flow

A multi-dimensional upwind fluctuation splitting scheme is developed and implemented for two-dimensional and axisymmetric formulations of the Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured meshes. Key features of the scheme are the compact stencil, full upwinding, and non-linear discretization which allow for second-order accuracy with enforced positivity. Throughout, the fluctuation splitting scheme is compared to a current state-of-the-art finite volume approach, a second-order, dual mesh upwind flux difference splitting scheme (DMFDSFV), and is shown to produce more accurate results using fewer computer resources for a wide range of test cases. A Blasius flat plate viscous validation case reveals a more accurate upsilon-velocity profile for fluctuation splitting, and the reduced artificial dissipation production is shown relative to DMFDSFV. Remarkably, the fluctuation splitting scheme shows grid converged skin friction coefficients with only five points in the boundary layer for this case. The second half of the report develops a local, compact, anisotropic unstructured mesh adaptation scheme in conjunction with the multi-dimensional upwind solver, exhibiting a characteristic alignment behavior for scalar problems. The adaptation strategy is extended to the two-dimensional and axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations of motion through the concept of fluctuation minimization.

Wood, William A., III↗
DOE OSTI2024

A General Framework for Error-controlled Unstructured Scientific Data Compression

Data compression plays a key role in reducing storage and I/O costs. Traditional lossy methods primarily target data on rectilinear grids and cannot leverage the spatial coherence in unstructured mesh data, leading to suboptimal compression ratios. We present a multi-component, error-bounded compression framework designed to enhance the compression of floating-point unstructured mesh data, which is common in scientific applications. Our approach involves interpolating mesh data onto a rectilinear grid and then separately compressing the grid interpolation and the interpolation residuals. This method is general, independent of mesh types and typologies, and can be seamlessly integrated with existing lossy compressors for improved performance. We evaluated our framework across twelve variables from two synthetic datasets and two real-world simulation datasets. The results indicate that the multi-component framework consistently outperforms state-of-the-art lossy compressors on unstructured data, achieving, on average, a 2.3 − 3.5× improvement in compression ratios, with error bounds ranging from 1 × 10 the −6 to 1×10−2. We further investigate impact of hyperparameters, such as grid spacing and error allocation, to deliver optimal compression ratios in diverse datasets.

Gong, Qian↗