The Future in CFD is Already Here

The following two documents describe the vision of state-of-the-art of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD):

• CFD Vision Study: A Path to Revolutionary Computational Aerosciences
• Future Directions in Computational Fluid Dynamics 

The breakthrough of the G2/Unicorn/FEniCS fluid solver at the 3rd AIAA  HighLift Prediction Workshop (HighLiftPW-3) as documented here (and commented on at The Secret of Flight), shows that the future is already here! 

More specifically G2/Unicorn/FEniCS today delivers what is described as Grand Challenge Problem 1: 

• LES of a powered aircraft configuration across the full flight envelope. 
• This case focuses on the ability of CFD to simulate the flow about a complete aircraft geometry at the critical corners of the flight envelope including low-speed approach and takeoff conditions, transonic buffet, and possibly undergoing dynamic maneuvers, where aerodynamic performance is highly dependent on the prediction of turbulent flow phenomena such as smooth body separation and shock-boundary layer interaction.

This is made possible by a combination of the following elements:

1. Euler/Navier-Stokes as parameter free model for high Reynolds number flow.
2. Slip boundary condition as basic simple parameter-free wall model.
3. Time resolved computational solution by G2 as residual-stabilised finite element solver.
4. Automatic turbulence model from computational residual stabilisation.
5. Automatic residual-based tetrahedral mesh adaptivity.
6. Automatic duality-based output error control.

LES by G2/Unicorn/FEniCS of a powered aircraft configuration across the full flight envelope.