Numerical simulation of hypersonic flow based on unstructured adaptive grid method

A method of unstructured adaptive grids was developed to simulate the inviscid hypersonic flow field. The mesh edges needed to be refined were defined based on the ratio of flow variable's gradients, and the finer mesh was obtained by adaptively refining the gird elements using a reasonable adaptive sensor. An initial very fine surface mesh was generated to descript the detailed shape of the calculation configuration, and the refined mesh points of boundary grid elements were reasonably disposed on the surface of configurations by using the initial very fine surface mesh, and the original shape of the configuration was kept after refinement operations. The three dimensional Euler equations were solved to numerically simulate the hypersonic flow around the double-ellipsoid configuration, and the calculation results agreed well with the experimental data. It was demonstrated that the presented method of unstructured adaptive grid technology is reasonable and effective for simulating the hypersonic flow field.