Metric Informed Mesh Improvement Capability (MIMIC)

About this technology

Overview

The Metric Informed Mesh Improvement Capability (MIMIC) enables anisotropic mesh adaptation for hypersonic flow simulations based on a provided initial mesh and corresponding Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) flow solution. MIMIC computes an error indicator that provides the size and directionality of the local interpolation error. Using, this error indicator, a new mesh is derived that targets to minimize this local error throughout the computational domain. Once an adapted mesh is obtained, the previous flow solution is interpolated on this new mesh and used as a new initial condition to restart the simulation process. The generation of the adapted mesh is carried out in parallel in order to reduce the turn around time. MIMIC is currently a stand-alone software utility that has been used in combination with the US3D code which is used to simulate advanced compressible and reacting flows. However, the current implementation of MIMIC can be beneficial to other CFD simulation software capabilities within NASA.