Volume 10 Issue 1 Spring 2006

CFD Analysis of a Solar In 2001, DUTs car, the Nuna 1, won the race at a speed of 92
km/hr. DUTs second car, the Nuna 2 won the race in 2003 at
Powered Car a speed of 97 km/hr. After the 2003 race, DUT decided to use
CFD and wind tunnel experiments to improve the design of their
Article by L.L.M. Boermans and J.P. Hemerik, Delft University of next car, the Nuna 3, for the 2005 race.
Technology

DUT choose to use Gridgen as the preprocessor for their CFD

analysis. They used FLUENT as the flow solver and FIELDVIEW
for postprocessing.
(Continues on page 2)

Hybrid Meshes for Wave Capturing

of Surface Ship Flows
Article by Steve Karman and Robert Wilson, UT SimCenter at
Chattanooga, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Modeling of free surface flows for hydrodynamic applications

Delft Universitys Nuna 3
Research students at the Department of Aerospace Engineering
at the Delft University of Technology (DUT) used Gridgen to cre-
ate high quality grids in their design of the solar powered cars
Nuna 2 and Nuna 3 for the World Solar Challenge.
The World Solar Challenge is a biennial solar powered car race
from Darwin to Adelaide, Australia. The 3000 kilometer race
was won in 2001, 2003, and 2005 by cars designed by DUT.
can be accomplished using surface fitting methods for low to
medium Froude numbers. But when the Froude number is
larger, such as flows associated with steep and overturning
waves, the fitting methods encounter difficulties. The University
of Tennessee SimCenter at Chattanooga has implemented a
multiphase surface capturing approach to handle these higher
Froude number cases, Fr > 0.4. This approach has been applied
to several validation cases, including the R/V Athena research
vessel shown in this article. The R/V Athena is a converted high
speed U.S. Navy patrol gunboat capable of speeds of at least 35
knots with a length of L=154 feet. Simulations were performed
at model scale and compared with measurements taken at the
Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division using a 1/8.25
scale barehull model of the R/V Athena.

The meshing requirements of these mixed phase analyses are

INSIDE THIS ISSUE very demanding. Since the interface between the water and
air is being captured, the grid must be highly resolved in the
zone where the water-air surface is expected, especially in the
CFD Analysis of a Solar Powered Car 1 direction normal to the free surface. The density ratio across
Hybrid Meshes for Wave Capturing 1 the interface is on the order of 1000 to 1. This translates into
a typical vertical spacing requirements are on the order of 1.0e-
Gridgen Product News 4 03. When the surface is highly irregular, such as an overturning
Partner Highlight 5 wave, this mesh spacing is required in all three directions. A
(Continues on page 3)
Gridgen Support 6

Toll Free (888) GRIDGEN www.pointwise.com


Solar Powered Car
(Continued from page 1)
Gridgen was used to create a hybrid grid with prism blocks on the
wall and unstructured blocks on the rest of the control volume.
A higher density grid was applied under the belly pan and in
the wake. The position of transition from laminar to turbulent
boundary layer on the body and the wheel boxes is taken from oil
flow patterns and stethoscope measurements on the wind tunnel
model. In the calculations, the turbulent viscosity is switched off
in the laminar zone. It turned out that CFD calculations with the
k- realizable model produced lift and drag results comparable
to the wind tunnel experiments.
Cut at the wheelbox of the right front wheel.
The thrust (green) and pressure drag (red) on the wheel boxes in driving direction at 0 and 20 degrees sidewind conditions.
Pointwise FocalPoint Spring 2006 2
Originally, the wheel fairings were causing an area of adverse
pressure gradient on the belly pan. This triggered premature
transition from laminar to turbulent flow, increasing skin fric-
tion drag.
On the design of the Nuna 3, the bump in the pressure distribu-
tion was eliminated by modifying the belly pan, allowing laminar
flow up to the rear wheel fairing.
Cut at the wheelbox of the right front wheel.
The students were also able to shape the front wheel fairings
such that a suction effect is created under crosswind conditions
that reduces pressure drag.
Using CFD, DUT once again was successful in designing the win-
ning car in the 2005 World Solar Challenge. The Nuna 3 won
the race with an average speed of 103 km/hr.
 Pointwise FocalPoint Spring 2006 3

Surface Ship Flows

(Continued from page 1)

fully unstructured mesh would require an exorbitant number of

tetrahedral elements to fully resolve all regions of the domain
where the high gradients are expected. Structured meshes can
be used to efficiently resolve the air-water interface in calm re-
gions of the domain, but would result in over-resolving far field
regions due to propagation of the grid resolution near the air-
water interface. Therefore, a hybrid mesh topology was chosen
to model the complete domain consisting of the surface ship,
the air-water interface and far field.

Mesh of the water-air surface

Predicted free surface waves.

Gridgen was used as the primary tool to create the viscous
meshes for these analyses. Structured blocks were created
to resolve the air-water interface near the bow and transom
stern regions of the ship where steep and overturning waves
were anticipated. In the vertical direction, these blocks extend
z/L=0.025 above and z/L=0.0125 below the calm water surface.
The figure above shows the mesh at the calm water line. The
calmer regions of the air-water interface were modeled with
prismatic elements. These elements were created by marching
a triangulated mesh in the vertical direction. The vertical spacing
matched the spacing defined in the fully structured blocks just
mentioned. The remaining regions of the domain were modeled
with fully unstructured tetrahedral elements. In addition, viscous
elements were inserted normal to the ship surface using an in-
house developed viscous mesh generation program.
Comparison of predicted and measured free surface wave.

Results were obtained for the R/V Athena research vessel in calm
seas at Fr=0.43 and Re=19.8x106. The two images to the upper
right show a perspective view of the predicted free surface where
overturning waves can be observed at the bow and transom. The
figure to the lower right shows a comparison of the predicted
wave contours with measurements.
 Pointwise FocalPoint Spring 2006 4

Gridgen Product News

Version 15 and Gridgens Legacy

Version 15 represents Gridgens 22-year legacy and the shared experiences of our customers worldwide for applications from
aerospace to automotive to marine, from undergraduate students to seasoned CFD veterans. As you would expect, this
diverse group of clients has a diverse range of technical requirements from CAD to platform to CFD. By necessity, Gridgen
has evolved into a cross-platform, CAD-neutral, solver-neutral, hybrid mesher to meet these requirements.

A recent significant addition to Gridgen is the introduction of support for solid models. When solid models are imported
from CAD or assembled in Gridgen, the issue of water-tightness becomes moot. Furthermore, the introduction of quilts (a
meshing-specific solid modeling entity) allows us to convert the arbitrary CAD topology to an engineering topology. Solid
modeling is supported by new capabilities for creating and modifying trimmed surfaces. Many interoperability issues have
been resolved with the continuing upgrades to Gridgens Native CAD Readers (NCR). One customers geometry preparation
time was reduced from four days to less than an hour when using an NCR. Gridgen can now export IGES files, including
both geometry and grids, so the loop back to CAD can be closed.

Gridgens core meshing techniques span from highly automated unstructured tet meshes to structured hex grids for the
ultimate in control. Hybrid meshes, consisting of any combination of tets, hexes, prisms, and pyramids, offer the best of
both worlds. Near-wall prism and hex extrusion has been an area of keen focus in V15. New extrusion boundary conditions
for geometry constraint and adjacent grid matching extend the scope of geometries to which the extrusion methods can
be applied. When coupled with the new ability to extrude hexes and pyramids simultaneously, extruded layers of different
cell type and thickness can be created as dictated by the needs of the analysis. For structured grids, addition of a multigrid
algorithm speeds convergence of the elliptic PDE solver by up to 15 times while tuning of the successive over-relaxation
algorithm results in a 5x speed-up.

GridgenGlyph scripting continues to yield benefits in terms of automation, so much so that the Glyph Script Exchange was
established on our web site to provide a forum for sharing scripts with the Gridgen community. Non-expert analysts now
benefit from completely automated meshing applications that start from design parameters and deliver mesh and boundary
conditions formatted for the CFD solver. Expert analysts, on the other hand, use scripted macros to automate the repetitive
aspects of the meshing task.

On the interactive side of meshing, support for 5 new platforms has been introduced in V15: HP-UX 11 for both PA-RISC
and Itanium, Mac, AMD Opteron, and SGI Prism. In alphabetical order, the solver interfaces that have been upgraded or
added in V15 include Cobalt, CFD++, CFX, FrontFlow, FV-UNS, NSAERO, Phoenics, STAR-CCM+, TASCflow, VSAEROhybrid,
and WIND.

The Future is Pointwise

If Version 15 represents Gridgens 22-year legacy, its future is Pointwise, our new, next-generation, eponymous, CAE pre-
processing software. Pointwise builds upon Gridgens core meshing technology and forms the basis for the next 22 years
of meshing with a new interface and user-interaction model that vastly streamlines the meshing process.

We are developing Pointwise in conjunction with an advisory team of customers and business partners. Attendees at the
2006 Gridgen User Group Meeting were given the chance to test drive an early prototype and gave overwhelming posi-
tive feedback. It is too early to give you too many details, but watch this space for future updates on the future of CFD
preprocessing.
 Pointwise FocalPoint Spring 2006 5

Partner Highlight

Solutions proprietary Arbitrary Shape Deformation (ASD)

technology. You can then evaluate the new design using
your preferred CFD code.

After making things easy, Optimal Solutions decided to take

Aston Martin racing DBR9
Optimal Solutions Software
Need to optimize your geometry quickly? Sculptor by
Optimal Solutions Software might just be the tool for you.
Optimal Solutions of Idaho Falls, Idaho created Sculptor to
help the CFD engineer get the best possible results. Sculptor
is shape deformation software that can arbitrarily alter the
shape of a computerized object whose shape is defined by
the points of a grid.
In the past, reshaping an object such as an airplane wing
was a tedious job, requiring point-by-point adjustment of
hundreds or thousands of grid points. Sculptor removes this
tedium and makes it easy to reshape an object in just a few
minutes. By pushing and pulling a few control points the
model will deform intelligently and smoothly using Optimal
things a step further and include automated shape optimi-
zation. Typically, when you are engineering an object, you
have a goal in mind, such as minimizing the pressure drop
around a pipe elbow. In Sculptor, you can pull a few points
to reshape the object, then evaluate your new shape (using
a CFD code). If the result isnt adequate, then you can adjust
a few more points, then reevaluate. Gradually, you manually
iterate toward your design objective. However, because com-
puters are very good at iterating, Optimal Solutions decided
to automate this process. You need only define your design
objective, and let Sculptor march toward the solution. Even
better, Sculptor may find a shape you never even thought of.
In short, Sculptor eliminates hit-and-miss and hunt-and-peck
methods, replacing them with the optimal solution.
Most recently, consultants at Advantage CFD, distributors of
Scupltor in Europe, used Sculptor in the CFD design process
of the Aston Martin DBR9 race car. Sculptor helped reduce
the time to make large modifications to the geometry from
days to hours and enabled parametric optimization of key
aerodynamic components to the automobile. The real story
was about the ability of a world renown motorsport design
company to circumvent the traditional wind-tunnel-to-road
approach and go straight from CFD-developed design to
the racetrack.
For more information, contact John Jenkins at Optimal Solu-
tions Software, jjenkins@optimalsolutions.us.

Pointwise Consulting Services

Heres something you may not have known about the Pointwise Support Group - we can provide consulting services. If you need help
with a difficult grid, extra hands during a peak workload, or Gridgen customized for your computing environment, we can assist.

213 South Jennings Avenue Fort Worth, Texas 76104-1107 Toll-free 888-GRIDGEN
Tel (817) 377-2807 Fax (817) 377-2799 focalpoint@pointwise.com www.pointwise.com
FocalPoint is a publication of Pointwise, Inc. It is for Gridgen users and people interested in learning more about Gridgen and numerical grid
generation. It includes information about the latest release of Gridgen, future development plans, and tips on how to get the most out of Gridgen
while saving time in grid generation. Pointwise and Gridgen are registered trademarks and GridgenGlyph is a trademark of Pointwise, Inc. All other
trademarks are property of their respective owner. Copyright 2006 Pointwise, Inc. All rights reserved

213 South Jennings Avenue
Fort Worth, Texas 76104-1107
Volume 10 Issue 1 Spring 2006
Make Your Life Easier with Glyph
Want to get off to a running start using Gridgen Glyph to script
your meshing tasks? Then you will want to attend a new class
Pointwise is offering, the Tcl/Tk/Glyph Training Course. The
inaugural course will be taught August 2-4, 2006 at our office
in Fort Worth, Texas.
Glyph is an easy way for you to customize Gridgen and automate
many of your grid generation tasks. It can be used for macros
that encapsulate minor but repetitive tasks (automatically run
quality diagnostics on your volume grids), small applications that
let you do something you could not do otherwise in Gridgen
Interested in our Gridgen Teaching Partnership?
Recognized academic institutions already having at least two Gridgen academic licenses can add ten additional licenses for the dura-
tion of a class at no additional charge. For more information about our teaching licenses, please contact Heather McCoy at hlmccoy@
pointwise.com.
First Class
US Postage
PAID
FT WORTH, TX
Permit 356
(change the six colors in Gridgens default color palette), and
even to develop complete, standalone meshing applications (a
complete mesher for radial pumps). All the scripts mentioned
here are available for your use or modification from the Glyph
Script Exchange at www.pointwise.com/glyph/.
The Tcl/Tk/Glyph Training Course is a new three-day session that
covers Tcl, the underlying programming basis of Gridgen Glyph,
and Tk, Tcls graphical toolkit for building GUI panels, within
the framework of Gridgen Glyph, Gridgens scripting language.
Taught by a well-known Tcl/Tk programming expert and author
and Pointwise support engineers, this course combines lectures
with interactive examples and hands-on problems.
For more information or to register for the course, please
visit www.pointwise.com/support/train.shtml or call us at 888-
GRIDGEN.