Industry warms to CFD

Many U.S. industrial organizations are currently implementing adaptive gridding techniques and unstructured grid methods to streamline CFD processing and enhance CFD flow prediction accuracy. Adaptive-grid strategies couple grid generation with the flow solution algorithm; grid points are moved, added, or deleted in the field dynamically, as dictated by local flow gradients. Unstructured grids are similar to finite-element grids, and allow detailed resolution of geometric and flowfield features. Tools for displaying, manipulating, and analyzing the vast quantities of data contained in a CFD solution are required for full exploitation of CFD capabilities. Sophisticated interactive systems are being developed for workstations.