A Comparison Between Local h-Refinement and a Novel r-Refinement Method

Two mesh refinement methods are applied to an inviscid test case and the results are compared with the exact solution from gasdynamics theory. One method is a local hrefinement that is native to ANSYS Fluent and the other is an r-refinement method called the deformation method. An insightful, flow-based explanation of the deformation method is provided. Results show that both methods are capable of improving the quality of the solution, but the h-refinement method increases the number of nodes in the domain and changes connectivity information. The deformation method accomplishes similar results by redistributing points within the mesh. The benefits and potential limitations of both methods are discussed.