Further Extension and Validation of a Parallel Unstructured Mesh Adaptation Package

A parallel tetrahedral mesh adaptation code is expanded to treat general, mixed-element unstructured meshes comprised of any combination of basic element types. Emphasis is placed on developing conforming mesh modification methods that are solver-independent. Specific developments include the implementation of a treatment for viscous, high aspect ratio near wall tetrahedra, and cell subdivision methods for prismatic, hexahedral, and pyramid cells. Rebalancing of the adapted grid, and particularly issues associated with processor assignment of parent/child cell sets, is addressed. Validations are performed for decomposed, mixed-element meshes using cell-vertex and cell-centered unstructured solvers. The resulting parallel adaptation package is a powerful, versatile tool for obtaining gridconverged, steady state results, and may readily be applied to other unstructured flow solvers. The original document contains color images.