INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS Int. J. Numer. Meth.

Fluids 2011; 67:17 Published online 2 December 2008 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/d.1962

Hybrid mesh generation with embedded surfaces using a multiple marching direction approach
Yasushi Ito, , , Alan M. Shih and Bharat K. Soni
Enabling Technology Laboratory (ETLab), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-4461, U.S.A.

SUMMARY This paper proposes a method for the creation of hybrid meshes with embedded surfaces for viscous ow simulations as an extension of the multiple marching direction approach (AIAA J. 2007; 45(1):162167). The multiple marching direction approach enables to place semi-structured elements around singular points, where valid semi-structured elements cannot be placed using conventional hybrid mesh generation methods. This feature is discussed rst with a couple of examples. Elements sometimes need to be clustered inside a computational domain to obtain more accurate results. For example, solution features, such as shocks, vortex cores and wake regions, can be extracted during the process of adaptive mesh generation. These features can be represented as surface meshes embedded in a computational domain. Semi-structured elements can be placed around the embedded surface meshes using the multiple marching direction approach with a pretreatment method. Tetrahedral elements can be placed easily instead. A couple of results are presented to demonstrate the capability of the mesh generation method. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 15 May 2008; Revised 2 October 2008; Accepted 8 October 2008 KEY WORDS:

hybrid mesh generation; unstructured mesh; computational uid dynamics (CFD); embedded surfaces; singular points

1. INTRODUCTION Automatic hybrid mesh generation for 3D complex geometries is still a challenging problem in computational uid dynamics (CFD). Hybrid meshes have anisotropic semi-structured elements (triangular prisms and hexahedra) on no-slip walls to capture phenomena in boundary layers. Tetrahedra and a small number of pyramids are used to ll the rest of computational domains. A hybrid mesh is usually computationally efcient because it has fewer elements than an anisotropic tetrahedral mesh with the same number of nodes. Unfortunately, hybrid mesh generation is more difcult than anisotropic tetrahedral mesh generation [13] because semi-structured elements need to be maintained on no-slip walls. Mechanical objects usually have several singular points, where valid semi-structured elements cannot be placed using conventional hybrid mesh generation methods [3]. The size of elements around the singular points can be changed quickly and extremely low-quality
Correspondence

to: Yasushi Ito, Enabling Technology Laboratory (ETLab), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1530 3rd Avenue South, BEC 356B, Birmingham, AL 35294-4461, U.S.A. E-mail: yito@uab.edu Research Assistant Professor. Research Professor, Director of ETLab. Professor and Chair. Contract/grant sponsor: NASA Constellation University Institutes Project (CUIP); contract/grant number: NCC3-994 Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Y. ITO, A. M. SHIH AND B. K. SONI

elements can be created. In addition, hybrid meshes can be easily converted to anisotropic tetrahedral meshes if semi-structured elements are subdivided into tetrahedra. On the other hand, it is not always easy to convert anisotropic tetrahedral meshes to good-quality hybrid meshes. A multiple marching direction approach is discussed in our previous paper to create near-eld meshes only with the traditional elements (prisms, hexahedra, pyramids and tetrahedra) using an advancing layer-type method [4]. Tetrahedral mesh generation is then performed to ll the rest of the domain using an advancing front method. The outcomes of the approach are (i) the improved quality of a hybrid mesh around sharp convex corners and (ii) the ability to maintain semi-structured elements around singular points without negative volume elements. In this paper, we offer an extension of the multiple marching direction approach [4] in order to propose a new method to create hybrid meshes with embedded surfaces for viscous ow simulations. To obtain better results with limited computational resources, it is sometimes necessary to cluster elements within the computational domain. For instance, solution features can be extracted during the process of adaptive mesh generation [5]. These features, such as shocks, vortex cores and wake regions, can be represented as surface meshes. Semi-structured elements or tetrahedral elements can be placed around the embedded surface meshes using an approach similar to the multiple marching direction approach. The quality of the semi-structured elements can be much better than that of elements subdivided or redistributed during an adaptive mesh generation process. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. One of the important features of the multiple marching direction approach is that semi-structured elements can be placed around singular points, including those at the rims of the embedded surface meshes. A couple of examples of the singular points are shown in Section 2. A surface mesh should be a two-manifold closed surface to create a hybrid mesh using our approach. When a surface mesh is embedded inside the domain to be meshed, the entire surface mesh is automatically converted to a topological two-manifold closed surface. This conversion method is discussed in Section 3. In Section 4, a couple of hybrid meshes with embedded surfaces are shown to demonstrate the capability of our approach. Finally, conclusions are given in Section 5. 2. SINGULAR POINTS A singular point is a point where a single marching direction cannot be obtained without creating negative volume elements. In other words, a singular point is where a visibility region cannot be obtained, which constrains the marching vectors such that the new node position is visible from all faces of the manifold [6]. This means that semi-structured elements cannot be placed around the singular point using a single marching direction. Mechanical objects usually contain a small number of singular points, which prevent creating hybrid meshes suitable for CFD simulations. This is one of the reasons why anisotropic tetrahedral meshes become popular in viscous ow simulations. Let us think about creating a volume mesh inside a ball valve model shown in Figure 1. Although the geometry is very simple, the generation of a good-quality hybrid mesh inside the geometry is not easy. The green surface represents a hole, or port, through the center of a ball inside the valve. The valve is fully opened when the port is in line with both the ends of the valve. There are four singular points at the intersection of the ball and the rim of the valve when the valve is slightly opened. Figure 1(a) shows two of them, nodes A and B. The multiple marching direction approach enables semi-structured elements to be placed around the singular points. An edge on the surface mesh is dened as a sharp convex corner if the folding angle at the edge is greater than a threshold value (default value is 40 ). Bold red lines in Figure 1 represent the detected sharp convex corners. Multiple marching directions are calculated at the nodes on the sharp convex corners. In Figure 1(b), node A is seen from the opposite side through the wall, and the multiple marching directions are drawn as arrows. The colors of the boundary surfaces are the same as those in Figure 1(a). The sharp convex corners divide faces around a node into a certain number of local patches. If a node has n c sharp convex corners, the number of local patches is n c . For example, faces connecting to node A are divided into two local patches: (i) the green and yellow surfaces, and (ii) the blue surface and the surface behind the green surface. Two distinct normal
Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d

HYBRID MESH GENERATION WITH EMBEDDED SURFACES

Figure 1. Ball valve: (a) from the outsidesingular points, A and B, are indicated by red; (b) seeing node A from the opposite side through the wallnormal vectors are shown on sharp convex corners around node A; (c) top of the rst layer of a near-led mesh; and (d) cross-section of a hybrid mesh.

Figure 2. Hybrid mesh generation around the DRL F-6 Body/Wing/Pylon/Nacelle model: (a) geometry and (b) surface mesh and a cross-section through one of the almost-singular points.

vectors can be obtained on the two local patches using the visibility criterion [6] (green and blue arrows in Figure 1(b)). More normal vectors can be added in between based on a user-specied parameter to achieve better transition from a near-eld mesh to tetrahedral far-eld mesh (gray arrows). Prisms are added on the sharp convex corners in the rst layer of the near-eld mesh (Figure 1(c)), and then hexahedra are added in the following layers. The effect of the multiple marching directions is shown in the cross-section of the resulting hybrid mesh (Figure 1(d)). Figure 2 shows another example, a DLR F-6 Body/Wing/Pylon/Nacelle model from the Second AIAA Drag Prediction Workshop [7]. At the intersection of the pylon and ow-through nacelle,
Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d

Y. ITO, A. M. SHIH AND B. K. SONI

there are two almost-singular points (Figure 2(a)). The multiple marching direction approach enables to place enough semi-structured layers around such points (Figure 2(b)).

3. PRETREATMENT OF EMBEDDED SURFACES To create a hybrid mesh with embedded surfaces, the surfaces need to be placed inside the domain as single surface meshes. The automated pretreatment of the embedded surface meshes is required because a hybrid mesh generator usually accepts a two-manifold closed surface as input. Two types of elements can be placed around embedded surfaces: semi-structured elements (Type 1) or tetrahedral elements (Type 2). Figure 3 shows hybrid meshes around a wing with those types of embedded surfaces. In the case of Type 1, a topological two-manifold surface needs to be prepared. Figure 4 shows an example in 2D. Suppose there are n faces on the Type 1 embedded surface. Another n faces are created that have the opposite orientation. The nodes of the new n faces depend on the position of the nodes. If a node is on the rim of the Type 1 embedded surface and is not on a no-slip wall, the same node is used (e.g. node D in Figure 4). The node becomes a singular point, which is discussed in the previous section. The multiple marching direction approach takes care of those nodes without any additional considerations. Otherwise, a new node

Figure 3. Two types of embedded surfaces (yellow) with a wing (green): (a) type 1 and (b) type 2the embedded surface is automatically trimmed during the meshing process.

Figure 4. Topological two-manifold surface in 2D: (a) a circle (geometry) and an embedded line and (b) after adding new edges (dotted line) and new nodes (white points)each white point has the same coordinates with the corresponding black point.
Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d

HYBRID MESH GENERATION WITH EMBEDDED SURFACES

with the same coordinates is used (e.g. nodes A, B and C in Figure 4). After the conversion, the hybrid mesh generation method [4] is applied. In case of Type 2, near-eld mesh generation is performed rst on no-slip walls and Type 1 embedded surfaces to create good-quality semi-structured elements. The Type 2 embedded surfaces are then automatically trimmed so that they do not intersect with the elements already created and that they are not too close to the top of the near-eld mesh. The distance between the embedded surfaces and the top of the near-eld mesh is based on the maximum edge length at each node on those surfaces. If the distance is less than twice of the maximum edge length at a node, it is considered to be too small. Tetrahedral mesh generation is performed using an advancing front method in the rest of the domain with the trimmed embedded surfaces. The initial front is the top surface of the near-eld mesh and the both sides of the trimmed Type 2 embedded surfaces.

4. APPLICATIONS In this section, a couple of hybrid meshes with Type 1 embedded surface meshes are shown to demonstrate the capability of the hybrid mesh generation method. 4.1. Ogive Figure 5 shows a hybrid mesh around an ogive geometry in the third adaptive mesh generation cycle. In this case, we are interested in shocks around the ogive at a freestream Mach number of 2.5 and an angle of attack of 14 . First, an isosurface is calculated at a normalized Mach number of 0.99 (Figure 5(a)). To remove small features, least-square tting is applied to the isosurface

Figure 5. Hybrid mesh generation around an ogive geometry: (a) ogive and an isosurface of normalized Mach number at 0.99; (b) cones obtained by least-square tting; (c) resulting hybrid mesh with a cross-section at z = 0; and (d) enlarged view of the cross-section.
Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d

Y. ITO, A. M. SHIH AND B. K. SONI

Figure 6. Dihedral angle distribution of the hybrid mesh for the ogive model.

Figure 7. Cross-sections of a near-led mesh (quadrilaterals only) around the ONERA M5 model: (a) from the top and (b) from the bottom.

[8], and two cones are obtained (Figure 5(b)). The cone surfaces are trimmed so that they do not intersect with the ogive geometry and so that they properly intersect with the outlet plane (indicated by gray in Figure 5(c)). Surface triangulation on those surfaces is performed using a direct advancing front method [9, 10], and then they are embedded inside the domain. The initial spacing normal to the no-slip walls and the embedded surfaces are 1.0103 and 1.0102 in., respectively. The diameter of the cylindrical section is 3.7 in. Figure 5(c) and (d) show the resulting hybrid mesh with 3.9 M nodes, 6.3 M tetrahedra, 5.5 M prisms, 50k pyramids and 44k hexahedra. Prismatic layers on the embedded surfaces enable the efcient placement of nodes around the shocks, while maintaining the quality of the resulting hybrid mesh. Figure 6 shows the dihedral angle distribution of the hybrid mesh. The minimum and maximum dihedral angles are 6.07 and 168.77 , respectively.

4.2. ONERA M5 Figure 7 shows a hybrid mesh around the ONERA M5 model that has 3.6 M nodes, 2.9 M tetrahedra, 6.0 M prisms, 63k pyramids and 90k hexahedra. The embedded surface indicated by white is prepared beforehand in the wake of the wing to demonstrate the meshing capability. Pink and yellow surfaces represent quadrilaterals in cross-sections. The height of the near-eld mesh mostly depends on local surface mesh density to enable a smooth transition from the near-led mesh to tetrahedral mesh. Figure 8 shows the dihedral angle distribution of the hybrid mesh.
Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d

HYBRID MESH GENERATION WITH EMBEDDED SURFACES

Figure 8. Dihedral angle distribution of the hybrid mesh for the ONERA M5 model.

5. CONCLUSIONS A hybrid mesh generation method with embedded surfaces is presented as the extension of the multiple marching direction approach [4]. When a surface mesh is embedded inside the domain to be meshed, the entire surface mesh is automatically converted to a topological two-manifold closed surface as a pre-process. The multiple marching direction approach is then applied to create a near-eld mesh around even singular points. The hybrid mesh generation method is applied to a couple of models with embedded surface meshes. High-quality hybrid meshes are obtained based on the dihedral angle distributions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is supported in part by the NASA Constellation University Institutes Project (CUIP) No. NCC3-994.
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Copyright

2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2011; 67:17 DOI: 10.1002/d