SOLAR Rapid Response CFD suite code for Navier Stokes simulation

SOLAR is the corporate Navier Stokes rapid response capability deployed within BAE Systems for aerodynamic design. It has developed over the last 5 years to meet the needs of BAE Systems, AIRBUS UK and QinetiQ. It was developed by a team of workers at ATC, Air Systems, AIRBUS, QinetiQ and ARA under a collaboration agreement. It has been designed, modified and tested to meet the requirements of projects in both military and civil sectors. SOLAR is a complete suite of CFD codes offering an impressive range of robust grid generation, flow solution and post processing capabilities over the highly complex configurations typical of the aerospace industry. SOLAR is made up of a number of modules which are named after Solar System planets.

Geometry Handing

SOLAR uses RAVEn, the same front end as FLITE3D. RAVEn is written in JAVA and is fully portable. It provides the interface to CAD geometries (via IGES) and allows simple and easy fixing up of CAD imperfections and holes. RAVEn provides for all of the basic entity manipulations (scaling, translation, reflection, rotation) as well as creation of simple surfaces via transfinite interpolation. Additionally, all the geometry set up for SOLAR can be performed within RAVEn.

Mesh Generation (MERCURY & VENUS)

Mesh generation comes in two parts – surface (MERCURY) meshing followed by volume (VENUS) meshing. The surface mesh generator in SOLAR is based on a novel advancing front technique to produce mainly (98%+) quadrilaterals and works on a CAD-patch basis in parametric space. The rapid response nature of SOLAR is enhanced by its ability to generate meshes over highly distorted and ‘poor’ CAD geometries with little effort from the CFD user. Mesh quality is extremely important and is compromised as little as possible. Techniques such as anisotropic surface meshing, cell merging and mesh refinement have been developed to enhance the quality of the mesh, whilst keeping the number of cells to an appropriate level for fast computation.

 

Volume meshing is achieved through a three-stage process. Firstly the mesh is grown away from the solid surfaces captured in the surface mesh. This process is optimised to produce cells with appropriate cell heights for turbulence models. The next stage is to fill in the majority of the remaining computational domain with Cartesian cells which have been locally refined to match flow features or the evolving mesh. The final stage is to cut this Cartesian mesh against the inflated layer and to tidy up any badly shaped cells. The resulting mesh contains arbitrary polyhedral cells and very general hanging faces.

 

Volume meshing is achieved through a three-stage process. Firstly the mesh is grown away from the solid surfaces captured in the surface mesh. This process is optimised to produce cells with appropriate cell heights for turbulence models. The next stage is to fill in the majority of the remaining computational domain with Cartesian cells which have been locally refined to match flow features or the evolving mesh. The final stage is to cut this Cartesian mesh against the inflated layer and to tidy up any badly shaped cells. The resulting mesh contains arbitrary polyhedral cells and very general hanging faces.

Flow Solution (JUPITER)

The SOLAR flow solver is a general Navier Stokes solver which has been used on a wide range of applications ranging from low speed civil high lift configurations through transonic complex aircraft in cruise to supersonic weapons. JUPITER is a low dissipation code, which is fully parallel and runs on a number of different platforms.

Post Processing (PLUTO)