A fast dynamic smooth adaptive meshing scheme with applications to compressible flow

Abstract

We develop a fast-running smooth adaptive meshing (SAM) algorithm for dynamic curvilinear mesh generation, which is based on a fast solution strategy of the time-dependent Monge-Amp\`{e}re (MA) equation, $\det \nabla \psi(x,t) = \mathsf{G} \circ\psi (x,t)$. The novelty of our approach is a new so-called perturbation formulation of MA, which constructs the solution map $\psi$ via composition of a sequence of near-identity deformations of a reference mesh. Then, we formulate a new version of the deformation method that results in a simple, fast, and high-order accurate numerical scheme and a dynamic SAM algorithm that is of optimal complexity when applied to time-dependent mesh generation for solutions to hyperbolic systems such as the Euler equations of gas dynamics. We perform a series of challenging 2$D$ and 3$D$ mesh generation experiments for grids with large deformations, and demonstrate that SAM is able to produce smooth meshes comparable to state-of-the-art solvers, while running approximately 200 times faster. The SAM algorithm is then coupled to a simple Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) scheme for 2$D$ gas dynamics. Specifically, we implement the $C$-method and develop a new ALE interface tracking algorithm for contact discontinuities. We perform numerical experiments for both the Noh implosion problem as well as a classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability problem. Results confirm that low-resolution simulations using our SAM-ALE algorithm compare favorably with high-resolution uniform mesh runs.