Using Adaptive Mesh Refinement to Study Grid Resolution Effects for Shock-Boundary Layer Interactions

Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) promises a much more computationally efficient means to obtain a discrete approximation to a continuous boundary value problem of a specified accuracy than classic isotropic grid refinement. The AMR capability of OVERFLOW (a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code) is utilized to provide estimates of the exact analytical solutions to problems of interest to turbulence modeling. Predictions of surface pressure and skin friction, essentially the state of stress at the surface, shows little difference with grids believed to be "grid resolved." Velocity profiles, on the other hand, show marked differences in flows with shocks. The AMR method, as implemented in OVERFLOW 2.2k, appears to provide the ability to produce arbitrarily accurate solutions at a predictable cost much smaller than classic uniform mesh refinement.