An efficient particle-locating algorithm for application in arbitrary 2D and 3D grids

Several alternative techniques have been proposed in the literature to efficiently locate particles within unstructured grids. The present paper reviews two recently published, particle-locating algorithms, and introduces a new approach which improves the performance of the previous methods. The proposed algorithm is valid for arbitrary two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) grids, it is simple to implement, and results in fairly small CPU-time requirements. Furthermore, the directed-search feature of the present method offers shorter search paths and allows the detection of walls during the tracking of the particle trajectory. The performance of the proposed particle-locating strategy is compared with existing ones, and is evaluated on two tests, namely a 2D/3D random particle-locating test and a 2D Lagrangian simulation of a premixed turbulent flame.