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In STAR-CCM+
Milovan Perić
www.cd-adapco.com
Finite-Volume Method, I
Continuum properties…
Polyhedral Control Volumes, IV
Left: 12 surface
integration points, 6
volume integration
points (in this 2D
example; in 3D,
typically around 60
surface integration
points and around 12
volume integration
points; multiple faces ANSYS-CFX STAR-CCM+
shared by the same
control volumes).
Polyhedral Control Volumes, V
Right: 6 surface
integration points, one
volume integration
point (at cell centroid).
One common face for
two neighbor cells.
Note: the number of
neighbor nodes is the
same in both cases, the
algebraic equation ANSYS-CFX STAR-CCM+
system looks the same…
Polyhedral Control Volumes, VI
● The first approach requires special treatment at boundaries, since a
control volume is also created around boundary nodes…
Polyhedral Control Volumes, VII
● There are also good reasons for generating and using polyhedral grids,
especially for internal flows:
It is easier to control grid size changes (zonal refinement or coarsening) –
this can take place gradually, without sudden changes as with trimmed
hexahedral grids (advantage in LES, acoustics etc.);
The variation of grid size at walls (in tangential direction) can also be
better controlled than with trimmed grids, where often jumps in face
size occur;
When using midpoint-rule integral approximation and the usual gradient
approximations, higher accuracy is obtained than with tetrahedral grids
(more immediate neighbours, better gradients);
Gradients are not smeared like when using more distant neighbours to
compute gradients on tetrahedral grids (polyhedral grid has more
immediate neighbours since it has more faces).
Why Polyhedral Grids?, III
● There are also good reasons for generating and using polyhedral grids,
especially for internal flows (continued):
When using polyhedral control volumes, conformal grids can easily be
generated at solid-fluid interfaces (important for heat transfer and some
other processes);
This is also true for tetrahedral grids, but not for trimmed hexahedral
grids…
When the flow is nearly orthogonal to a pair of opposite faces, convection
flux approximation has the highest accuracy (minimum numerical
diffusion) – especially important in recirculating flows...
In polyhedral grids, there are more directions which can be aligned with
flow direction in the sense just described (typically 6) than in hexahedral
(three) or tetrahedral grids (none).
In principle it is easier to optimize grid quality than with any other grid
type (more freedom to split, merge, deform etc.).
Conformal Grid at Fluid-Solid Interface
Solid Interface
Interface
Fluid
Solid
Grid Section
Grid Type Grid Level Base Size No. of Cells No. of Faces
Tetrahedral 1 0.002 128,823 297,077
Tetrahedral 2 0.001 680,544 1,489,269
Tetrahedral 3 0.0005 3,734,138 7,894,478
Polyhedral 1 0.002 60,805 244,046
Polyhedral 2 0.001 231,544 1,035,947
Polyhedral 3 0.0005 984,343 5,286,580
Trimmed 1 0.002 42,079 120,837
Trimmed 2 0.001 171,021 496,402
Trimmed 3 0.0005 933,686 2,744,399
Data for three levels of refinement for all three grid types (the same grid generation
parameters are used).
Comparison of Hex-, Tet- and Poly-Grid, IV
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Trimmed
Comparison of Hex-, Tet- and Poly-Grid, XII
Tetrahedral Polyhedral
Trimmed
Comparison of Hex-, Tet- and Poly-Grid, XIII
● Results for this test case confirm observations from earlier studies using
STAR-CCM+:
When a tetrahedral grid is converted to polyhedral grid (which is roughly
what we get when generating grids using the same base size), the number
of cells is 4-5 times lower, and the number of faces is also substantially
lower.
When the same under-relaxation factors are used, iterations converge
better on polyhedral than on tetrahedral grids (on tetrahedral grids,
residuals often oscillate and do not go below certain level).
The computing time on the polyhedral grid is ca. 5 times lower (partly
because substantially less iterations are needed, partly because of less
cells and faces). In the cases studied here, the total computing time on
polyhedral grids was 637 s and on tetrahedral grids it was 3030 s.
When the grid is sufficiently fine, results are very close; however, the cost
of obtaining them is lower on polyhedral grids.