Viscous airfoil computations using adaptive grid redistribution

A quantitative study of the numerical error reduction due to adaptive grid redistribution applied to Navier-Stokes computations of steady airfoil flows is presented. A grid redistribution procedure is described and applied to a range of flow cases including attached and separated flows at subsonic and transonic speeds. The error reduction resulting from grid adaptation is sensitive to the adaptive grid generation parameters used, especially those affecting the smoothness of the adapted grid. A suitable set of adaptive grid generation parameters is determined by comparison of adaptive grid solutions with grid-independent solutions. With the given parameters, adaptive grid redistribution is shown to result in an effective reduction in numerical error and improved resolution of flow features.