Aerospace applications of solution adaptive finite element analysis Original Research Article

A solution adaptive finite element procedure for calculating complex flow fields about complicated aerospace configurations is presented. The procedure includes a new adaptive grid generation method based on a Delaunay triangulation scheme combined with adaptation sources. With this method, high-quality solution adapted grids can be generated efficiently. Techniques are presented for obtaining adaptation sources which automatically detect relevant features in a flow field. Computed solutions are presented which successfully demonstrate the overall procedure for a variety of aerospace configurations.