Unsteady flow simulation with mesh adaptation

Mesh adaptation is a reliable and effective method to improve the precision of flow simulation with computational fluid dynamics. Mesh refinement is a common technique to simulate steady flows. In order to dynamically optimize the mesh for transient flows, mesh coarsening is also required to be involved in an iterative procedure. In this paper, we propose a robust mesh adaptation method, both refinement and coarsening included. A data structure of [Formula: see text]-way tree is adopted to save and access the parent–children relationship of mesh elements. Local element subdivision is employed to refine mesh, and element mergence is devised to coarsen mesh. The unrefined elements adjacent to a refined element are converted to polyhedrons to eliminate suspending points, which can also prevent refinement diffusing from one refined element to its neighbors. Based on an adaptation detector for vortices recognizing, the mesh adaptation was integrated to simulate the unsteady flow around a tri-wedges. The numerical results show that the mesh zones where vortices located are refined in real time and the vortices are resolved better with mesh adaptation.