CFD Online Discussion Forums - [blockMesh] Enhanced blockMesh for external aerodynamics

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- - [blockMesh] Enhanced blockMesh for external aerodynamics (https://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/openfoam-meshing/110201-enhanced-blockmesh-external-aerodynamics.html)

Enhanced blockMesh for external aerodynamics

I have written an enhanced blockMesh for the last few days, I am wondering if the developers want to include it or not.

The utility is now able to handle almost all single-object, non-concave, 2D external flow CFD mesh generation, flow around a 2D object. For example, an regular shape, or irregular polygon, or airfoil, etc.

The mesh generated is still multi-block mesh. But the burden on the user is much smaller.

The input needed now is something like:

Code:

/*--------------------------------*- C++ -*----------------------------------*\

| =========                 |                                                 |

| \\      /  F ield         | OpenFOAM: The Open Source CFD Toolbox           |

|  \\    /   O peration     | Version:  2.1.x                                 |

|   \\  /    A nd           | Web:      www.OpenFOAM.org                      |

|    \\/     M anipulation  |                                                 |

\*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

FoamFile

{

    version     2.0;

    format      ascii;

    class       dictionary;

    object      blockMeshDict;

}

// * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * //



convertToMeters 1;



twoDObject

(

// NACA Airfoil

// ....



    // Square

    // (0 0 0)

    // (1 0 0)

    // (1 1 0)

    // (0 1 0)



    // irregular

    (-2 -1 0)

    (-1.9 -1.2 0)

    (-2.2 -0.2 0)

    (1.2 -0.3 0)

    (1.2 -0.2 0)

    (2 0 0)

    (1.8 1 0)

    (0 2 0)

    (-2 1 0)



    // Concave

    // (-5 -1 0)

    // (-2 -3 0)

    // (2 -3 0)

    // (3 1 0)

    // (1 4 0)

    // (-3 0 0)

    // (-4 2 0)

);



xLimM   -40.0;

xLimP    50.0;

yLimM   -40.0;

yLimP    40.0;

zThik    0.5;

meshDensity     (1 100 1);

expRatios       (1 120 1);

refineLevel     5;

firstCellHeight 0.001;



isConcave       false;



AOA     90;





edges

(

);



mergePatchPairs

(

);



// ************************************************************************* //

As can be seen, a few features:
1. You can define the object, just by its corners, and also no need to care about its orders.
2. You could set the first cell height.
3. You could set the mesh density as usual, but now you can even do it in a more simply way by setting mesh refine level, which refines the circumferential grid;
4. Angle of attach could be easily set (AOA);
5. The outer boundary (geometries and patch names and types) is done like a macro, you just need to set the x and y limits. (This is a rectangular outer boundary.)

Here are two figures,
Attachment 17488
Attachment 17489

Cheers,

Hi,

thanks for your work. If you want to share your code, you can publish it asstand alone application on openFoam wiki as Nils did with waves2FOAM (http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/waves2Foam).

You could also contact Hrvoje Jasak and ask if the code gets includes in OpenFOAM ext (http://www.extend-project.de/index.p...iew=department)

Kind Regards,
Christian Lucas

Thanks, I asked because it is not a standalone application, I changed the core library as well, including the constructor of blockMesh.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is multiple airfoils possible with this enhanced blockMesh?

Not now, I tried to make it more able to handle multi-objects, but before doing that, I was hoping to have smoothing works first. After a few days of trial and error, the smoothing does work a little bit, but I found it not very efficient to write within OpenFOAM's framework, majorly because of the grid definition of each block descriptor, so I give up.

But I will keep this in mind (it is also one of my objectives) as I am currently looking for a better mechanism to replace OpenFOAM's native block descriptor.

Thanks though.