Hello,

I'm currently working on CFD analysis of our college's solar car design. These vehicles have very streamlined shapes with sharp trailing edges, much like an extremely low aspect ratio aircraft wing on faired wheels. I've been attempting to get a good volume mesh, but having difficulty effectively capturing boundary layer effects. I've been using a tri mesh for the surfaces with a hybrid volume mesh, using prismatic cells in the boundary layer and tetrahedral elements elsewhere. Biggest problem is the behavior of the prismatic elements at sharp trailing edges; I inevitably get extremely high skewness where TGrid tries to bend the boundary layer cells around the sharp edge. I would gladly terminate the prismatic layer at the trailing edge and use a non-conformal interface, but can't get the proper settings to make it work. If anyone has suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Andy Berner Principia College Solar Car Team

Icemcfd has tools to do precisely that.