Automatic Hexahedra Grid Generation Method for Component-Based Surface Geometry

The method outlined here is capable of automatically generating hexahedra grid around solid surface described as overlapping components. This offers a significant benefit in design environment, because the geometry of individual component and their relative positions can be readily modified. The method is based on Cartesian grid method, which is well known for its efficiency and speed in filling a computational domain. The cells near solid surface are hexahedral cells of general shape, which includes degenerate forms such as pyramid. Because the cells are generated from the interior of computational domain toward the solid surface, the method tolerates surface defects such as small gap and overlap, which are sometimes found in surface grid obtained from CAD. In this study this property is further extended to direct treatment of a configuration consisting of intersecting surface components, that is, without trimming and regenerating the whole surface. The geometry of DLR F6 with engine and pylon has been used to demonstrate the capability of the method.