Pointwise Updates Gridgen Computational Fluid Dynamics Meshing Software

By DE Editors

Pointwise has announced the latest release of its Gridgen computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing software featuring a suite of new tools for coupling mesh generation with overset grid assembly (OGA).  Close coupling of meshing and OGA has the potential to reduce the effort required to generate overset grids by making OGA visible to guide meshing and ensure the most accurate and effective grid overlaps.

“For a long time, Gridgen has been very popular within the overset grid community for its geometry handling, surface meshing, and structured hexahedral volume gridding,” says Nick Wyman, director of applied research at Pointwise.  “Expanding our tool set to include the assembly process was the logical next step in the evolution of the product.  Customer input heavily influenced how this feature set was implemented.”

Overset gridding is an alternative to multi-block grids.  In a multi-block grid, the three-dimensional domain is decomposed into regions (blocks), each of which is filled with a structured hexahedral grid (also called a mapped mesh).  The blocks connect to each other with complete point-to-point matching.   Because a multi-block topology can be time consuming to create for a complex shape like an aircraft, a time-saving alternative is an overset topology.  In an overset grid, the blocks don’t abut — they overlap.  The goal of OGA software, therefore, is to compute how to interpolate information from one block to the next and ensure that interpolation is accurate.

Also included in Gridgen V15.16 are improvements to the tet-to-prism cell recombination algorithm used with the T-Rex hybrid meshing technique that can reduce overall cell count in some cases by 28% and a native build for Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.4 and newer, including OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

For more information, visit Pointwise.

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