Publication Date:
2011-08-24
Description:
The ability to treat arbitrary boundary shapes is one of the most desirable characteristics of a method for generating grids. 3DGRAPE is designed to make computational grids in or about almost any shape. These grids are generated by the solution of Poisson's differential equations in three dimensions. The program automatically finds its own values for inhomogeneous terms which give near-orthogonality and controlled grid cell height at boundaries. Grids generated by 3DGRAPE have been applied to both viscous and inviscid aerodynamic problems, and to problems in other fluid-dynamic areas. 3DGRAPE uses zones to solve the problem of warping one cube into the physical domain in real-world computational fluid dynamics problems. In a zonal approach, a physical domain is divided into regions, each of which maps into its own computational cube. It is believed that even the most complicated physical region can be divided into zones, and since it is possible to warp a cube into each zone, a grid generator which is oriented to zones and allows communication across zonal boundaries (where appropriate) solves the problem of topological complexity. 3DGRAPE expects to read in already-distributed x,y,z coordinates on the bodies of interest, coordinates which will remain fixed during the entire grid-generation process. The 3DGRAPE code makes no attempt to fit given body shapes and redistribute points thereon. Body-fitting is a formidable problem in itself. The user must either be working with some simple analytical body shape, upon which a simple analytical distribution can be easily effected, or must have available some sophisticated stand-alone body-fitting software. 3DGRAPE does not require the user to supply the block-to-block boundaries nor the shapes of the distribution of points. 3DGRAPE will typically supply those block-to-block boundaries simply as surfaces in the elliptic grid. Thus at block-to-block boundaries the following conditions are obtained: (1) grids lines will match up as they approach the block-to-block boundary from either side, (2) grid lines will cross the boundary with no slope discontinuity, (3) the spacing of points along the line piercing the boundary will be continuous, (4) the shape of the boundary will be consistent with the surrounding grid, and (5) the distribution of points on the boundary will be reasonable in view of the surrounding grid. 3DGRAPE offers a powerful building-block approach to complex 3-D grid generation, but is a low-level tool. Users may build each face of each block as they wish, from a wide variety of resources. 3DGRAPE uses point-successive-over-relaxation (point-SOR) to solve the Poisson equations. This method is slow, although it does vectorize nicely. Any number of sophisticated graphics programs may be used on the stored output file of 3DGRAPE though it lacks interactive graphics. Versatility was a prominent consideration in developing the code. The block structure allows a great latitude in the problems it can treat. As the acronym implies, this program should be able to handle just about any physical region into which a computational cube or cubes can be warped. 3DGRAPE was written in FORTRAN 77 and should be machine independent. It was originally developed on a Cray under COS and tested on a MicroVAX 3200 under VMS 5.1.
Keywords:
FLUID MECHANICS AND HEAT TRANSFER
Type:
ARC-12620
Format:
text
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