9360558 Wang In the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), a multi-zonal approach greatly simplifies the resolution of complex geometrical details and the application of different flow physics in different zones of the flow domain. Previous multi-zonal patched and overlapped approaches suffered from one or both of the following problems. In the proposed approach, one of the overlapping boundaries is used to divide the physical flow domain into non-overlapping regions and flux conservation is enforced on this overlapping boundary locally and globally. The proposed approach unifies the treatment for arbitrarily patched and overlapped meshes. The interpolation of flow variables from one zone to another is not necessary. The proposed approach is fully conservative, highly accurate, suitable for both steady and unsteady flow problems and easy to implement in finite-difference/finite volume CFD codes. In Phase I, the proposed methodology will be implemented and assessed for several 2D and 3D problems without relative mesh movement. Further extension to viscous flow and unsteady flow with relative mesh movement and implementation of the proposed methodology in a production-level flow analysis code will be carried out in Phase II.
