CFD With Lower Cell Count

Pointwise announced the latest release of its Pointwise computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing software, which includes a refactored algorithm for agglomerating cells in a hybrid mesh. The new algorithm improves the reduction in cell count. The best reduction achieved during testing was a 377 million cell mesh that was reduced to about 155 million cells, the company says.

"We continue to improve our T-Rex hybrid mesh generation technique at the request of customers," said John Steinbrenner, Pointwise's vice president of research and development. "This automated technique extrudes layers of anisotropic tetrahedra in the boundary layer region. The customer's mesh size, and hence CFD solver time and memory usage, can be cut drastically by combining three adjacent tets in the extruded stack into a prism wherever possible. The refactored cell agglomeration algorithm improves on prior versions of the software."

The refactored technique has improved the reduction of a mesh's overall cell count relative to previous versions of the software by up to 20% by more robustly handling complex cell topologies. In all cases, the refactored tet-to-prism cell agglomeration approaches the theoretical maximum of two-thirds reduction in the extruded region.

Pointwise Version 17.1 R2 includes also several smaller new features and defect corrections.

For more information, visit Pointwise.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.