Pointwise Awarded Overset Meshing Research Contract

Pointwise, Inc. has been awarded an SBIR Phase II contract by the U.S. Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center to streamline overset mesh generation for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis.

The two-year contract will feature support for unstructured overset meshes and innovative research into mesh adaption for optimization of overset interpolation. The project will be headed by Nick Wyman, Pointwise director of applied research, and will include support by Dr. Ralph Noack, a pioneer in the field of overset grid assembly and author of the SUGGAR++ software.

"Overset simulation's greatest potential lies in its ability to model extremely large systems with complex moving body interactions. Such models push overset mesh generation and assembly to the limit, often significantly impacting analysis efficiency. We are working to reduce the manual aspect of creating and assembling these models." stated Wyman. "Furthermore, the mesh adaption features we add will improve robustness and accuracy of overset grid simulation."

The contract will build on the work completed during an SBIR Phase I contract under the same topic. New features added during the Phase I contract include integration of Gridgen with common overset grid assembly software and tools for importing and visualizing overset assembly interpolation data. These new features were released in a product update, Gridgen version 15.16, in August 2010.

This work is sponsored by Arnold Engineering Development Center, Air Force Materiel Command and the United States Air Force.

Pointwise, Inc. is solving the top problem facing engineering analysts today - mesh generation for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The company's Gridgen and Pointwise software generates structured, unstructured and hybrid meshes; interfaces with CFD solvers, such as ANSYS FLUENT, STAR-CD, ANSYS CFX and OpenFOAM as well as many neutral formats, such as CGNS; runs on Windows (Intel and AMD), Linux (Intel and AMD), Mac and Unix, and has scripting languages that can automate CFD meshing. Large manufacturing firms and research organizations worldwide rely on Pointwise as their complete CFD preprocessing solution.