Adaptive-prismatic-grid method for external viscous flow computations

A new approach to compute external viscous flow fields around an airplane is discussed. Three-dimensional flow field is discretized using a prismatic grid where the bases of the grid cells are triangles that cover the three-dimensional surface in an unstructured manner. The direction away from the body surface is structured so as to achieve efficient and accurate computations for high-Reynolds number viscow flows. The unstructured surface grid allows a solutionadaptive grid refinement for the accuracy improvement. The prismatic grid is generated by a marching-type procedure in which grid spacings are controlled by a variational method. The flow field is computed using a finite-volume method. The capability of the method is demonstrated by applying it to a viscous flow computation around an aircraft configuration.