Time Discretization Scheme

Explicit (Direct) Scheme: - In explicit time discretization scheme, solution of each

discretized equation in the current time step (say (t+1)) is purely dependent on the solution at
the previous time step (t).
For e.g., - 1-D unsteady heat diffusion equation

Since all new value depends only on the value of previous time step, we can loop over the cells
to solve them nicely one by one.
Advantage: -
1- More robust (Resistant to crash or diverse)
2- Simple to code
Disadvantage: -
1- Slow convergence due to small time step
Implicit (Indirect) Scheme: - In implicit time discretization scheme, solution of the
discretised equation at the current time step (say (t+1)) is not only depends on the solution of
the previous time step (t) but also on the solution of the current time step (t+1) so cell variables
are solved simultaneously in each time step.
For e.g.: - f (u) = du / dt
Approximating above according to implicit formulation
u (n+1) = u(n) + h. f [u(n+1)]
Unknown Known Unknown
Advantage: -
1- Fast convergence due to large time step causes less computation time.
Disadvantage: -
1- Due to large time step (Δt), truncation error is high causes low accuracy, so this
scheme is not good for time dependent flow simulation.
2- More complicated to code
3- Usually less robust than explicit scheme i.e. it diverges easily than explicit scheme for
the same flow condition.
 Convective Numerical Methods
CFD code offers many types of PDE discretisation scheme. Few are following
1- Linear (Central differencing) scheme
2- Upwind scheme
3- Linear Upwind Scheme
4- QUICK
5- Limiter linear

Finite Control Volume Approach

In finite volume method, CFD code compute the solution at the centroid of every cell in our
mesh. Each face connects the owner cell (P) and neighbour cell (N). The computed value at
the centroid of each cell is interpolated to the center of each face. That’s how solution flows in
overall mesh. In this analysis, boundary faces, and internal faces require different treatment.

Boundary face and Internal face and Interpolation of variable from cell center
to face center
Suppose we know the variable value (Ф) (say P, V, ρ, T etc.) at the owner cell centroid (Ф P) and
neighbour cell centroid (ФN). We want to know the value at the face center (Ф f). For this
purpose, a lot of discretisation scheme (or we can say it as face interpolation scheme) is there
with their own merit and demerit.

Linear or Central Differencing Scheme (Second Order Differencing

Scheme): -
In this scheme, Values interpolated from one cell centroid to another cell centroid varies
linearly so this scheme is second order accurate. Value interpolated at face center between
owner cell and neighbour cell is defined as

Here and
 Face Interpolation
• In the above figure, value between cell centroid is varying linearly, and value
interpolated on the face is donated by blue circle.
• This scheme is 2nd order accurate (First order accurate scheme will give the constant
red line in above figure)
• Problem with scheme is this scheme is unbounded means it subjected to higher non-
physical oscillation or wiggles in the solution field.
• Central differencing should be used for diffusion term but not for convection term in
RANS solver, but it can be used for convection term in LES where greater accuracy is
required.

Upwind Differencing Scheme:-

This scheme depends on the direction of mass flux. Ff > 0 indicate the mass flow out of the
cell and Ff < 0 indicate the mass flow into the cell.
The mass flux at the face centroid is defined as

Velocity vector at face center and linear interpolation from cell center to face
center
• In upwind differencing scheme, first we calculate the mass flux on the cell centroid
then accordingly we interpolate the values on the face center as

• As we can see in figure, there is a constant variation of variable values (Ф) from cell
centroid to face center so upwind differencing is only first order accurate because of
that it is unable to capture adverse pressure gradient, flow separation, vortex formation
etc. Upwind differencing should not be used for convection term if possible.
Use of upwind differencing scheme: -
• Reason behind using the upwind differencing scheme is because it is most stable
scheme for convection domain flow. This scheme can be used where solution is
unstable and diverging very frequently due bad mesh.
• In these cases, we can compute our initial CFD solution using upwind differencing
scheme with few hundred iterations to get the solution settle down and become
somewhat stable (that would not be accurate) and then after getting the initial solution,
we can switch this scheme to some more accurate scheme (Higher order scheme) to
get accuracy in the final solution. By this way, we can achieve the stability and accuracy
in our final solution.

Linear Upwind Differencing Scheme: -

This is very popular and accurate scheme than upwind differencing scheme. This scheme is
2nd order accurate but it is a slight unstable scheme so we should use the upwind differencing
scheme first in our CFD code for convection term to get the initial solution stable and then
switch it to linear upwind differencing scheme to get the accuracy of the solution.
The interpolation from cell center to face center is as follows

Here r is the distance between cell centroid (P) to face center (f). Gradient (∇∅) is used to
improve the accuracy of the extrapolation for the projection on the cell face.

It should be noted that linear upwind differencing scheme should be used for convection term
only and not for other term like diffusion term.

Reason behind the instability of this scheme:-

• Some time, the gradient (∇∅)P as shown in figure is too steep that projected value Фf on
the cell face (blue circle) is greater than the values of centroid of both owner and
neighbour cell which is violating the local minima/maxima of the limit of (∇∅)P and leads
to instability in the linear upwind scheme.

Too Steep Gradient Causes the Instability and Divergence in the

Solution Field
 • To improve the stability, we need to reduce the value of Фf to the value between
centroid of the owner and neighbour cell (red dot) as shown by green line so we need
the gradient limiter. Here Фf can be represented in terms of Фp and gradient limiter (φ)
as following.

Gradient limiter Improves the Accuracy of Interpolation

Advance Discretisation Scheme (ADS): - ADS uses the combination of Linear /

Central differencing for the accuracy (ФCD) and Upwind differencing for the stability (ФUD) of
the CFD solution. The face value Фf can be interpolated as

Here ψ is the blending function to switch the scheme. Value of ψ varies all over the mesh
depending on the solution. ADS choose the value of ψ such that it goes for upwind differencing
in the area where physical oscillation is more and goes for central differencing in the area
where physical oscillation is less. Some examples of ADS are TDV scheme, Gamma
differencing scheme, NVA, MUSCLE, QUICK scheme etc.

The Courant Number or Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL)

Number – The Stability Criteria
The CFL condition expresses that the distance travelled by any information during a timestep
within the mesh must be lower than the distance between mesh elements. In other words,
information from a given cell or mesh element must propagate only to its immediate
neighbours.
It should be noted that CFL number is not a sufficient condition for stability and some other
stability conditions are generally more restrictive than the CFL condition.
Consider 1-D rectangular cell with flow moving with velocity U from left to right. After the
time step Δt, flow will move U.Δt across the cell.

Flow moving through a cell

Courant Number is a non-dimensional number which governs the advection problem, which
is defined as the ratio of these two lengths, or the fraction of the cell moved by the flow in a
time step (Δt).

-----------> 1
Note: -
• For any explicit simple linear convection problem, the Courant number must be equal
or smaller than 1, otherwise, the numerical viscosity would be negative. Numerical
viscosity is defined as the function of
𝜇𝑛𝑢𝑚 = f [(1-u.∆𝑡/∆𝑥)]
• In general, the explicit methods depend greatly on courant number for their stability.
Whereas the implicit methods are insensitive with changes in courant number.
• From a physical viewpoint, the time step indicates the smallest unit of time that we
wish to resolve in the simulation, and therefore should be selected such that all the
physics of interest are resolved in time. Any flow structure that changes faster than the
time step defined through CFL leads to divergence of the solution so we should
decrease the time-step (indirectly decrease the CFL number) to convergence the
solution. The characteristic time scale of the problem depends upon several factors that
include the geometry size, the boundary conditions, and the flow characteristics.

Fraction of the cell moved by the flow in a time step is defined as CFL
Number

CFL Number for 3-D Cell: -

To calculate the CFL, we know the free stream velocity U and time-step Δt but we need to find
the way to calculate the cell distance Δx.

Different 3-D cell’s Shape

For 3-D cell, cell distance Δx can be calculated by
Total surface area (A) is sum of all the face’s area.

Total area is the sum of area of each face

Here unit normal vector 𝑛̂f has the direction from face center to the cell centroid or normal to
the face.

Velocity normal to the face is relevant to calculate the CFL number

Velocity normal to the face is = 𝑈𝑓 . 𝑛

̂𝑓
By equation 1, CFL number can be written as

Here Vp is cell volume and Af is total face area of that cell. Finally, Courant Number for 3D cell

--------> 2
From conservation of mass that total mass flux across any cell should be zero i.e.,

But if total mass flux across any cell is zero so CFL number would be zero from equation 2
which is unreasonable and incorrect.
To solve this problem, we will take the magnitude of mass flux only. This will reverse the half
of the flux so total flux will not be zero.

To calculate the CFL number, magnitude of mass flux is taken here only
Now we must add the factor of ½ as the half of the flux is reversed. For example.

Now complete general definition of the Courant Number

After rearranging the terms, Finally CFL number is defined as

This definition is adopted by OpenFOAM. Every cell in the mesh has a different courant
number so it can be plotted as a field values. CFD solver use maximum courant number to set
the time step.

CFL number is kind of field value which can be plotted

Stability Criteria: - There are some recommendations for maximum courant number
depending on different applications.
1- LES (C = 0.5-1)
2- Free surface Flow (C <1)
3- Compressible Flow (Depends on speed of sound)
4- Turbomechaniery (C< 80)
5- Explicit time stepping (C<1)
Most often maximum courant number should be less than 1.
Fixed Time Stepping: - When we choose the fixed time stepping for our CFD simulation
then CFD code goes through following procedure.
• Choose a time step size Δt and CFD solver computes the flow field U
• After that, computing the courant number field Co and reporting the maximum
Courant number to the user
• Proceed to the net iteration and keep Δt same.
Adjustable Time Stepping: - In the Case of automatic/adjustable time stepping, CFD
code goes to following procedure.

• Choose the initial time step size Δt and maximum courant number Co max and CFD
solver compute the flow field U
• Compute the courant number field Co and report the maximum Courant number
(Comax) to the user
• If Co > Comax then reduce the time step Δt for the next iteration
• Time step can be updated by

• In case, simulated courant number is very higher than maximum defined courant
number then solver reduce the courant number very rapidly which creates the
oscillation in the simulation and solution may diverse. To overcome this problem,
relaxation factor or limiting factor is provided to prevent large change to Δt.

Limiting factor or relaxation factor helps to reduce the oscillation in the

solution field

Summary: -
o Co represents the fraction of the cell moved by the fluid in one time-step.
o Co is evaluated for every cell in the mesh so this field can be plotted in post-processing.
o CFD solver reports the maximum courant number in the mesh.
o Maximum courant number can be used to update time steps to keep the solution stable.

Drag Polar Plot for cambered airfoil

 Mesh Quality
When constructing meshes for CFD, it is generally accepted that the user should try and
generate cells that are as close to perfect squares and perfect (equilateral) triangles as possible.
This is because skewed cells reduce the accuracy of the solution and may lead to divergence of
the CFD solver.

Different Kind and Quality of Cells in the Mesh

To improve the shape of the cells, it is useful to have quantitative metrics that can be used to
assess how close the cells are to perfect squares/triangles.

Different kind of 2-D and 3-D cells in the mesh

During mesh generation, user can use these metrics to assess the quality of the cells and seek
to improve them as much as possible. CFD codes and mesh generators have a variety of metrics
that can be used to assess the quality of cells in the mesh. However, it is often not clear which
metric is most important for the user to optimise. The main quality metrics are Aspect Ratio,
Jacobian Determinant, Non-orthogonality, and Equiangle Skewness (DOSA).

Aspect Ratio: -
Aspect ratio is the ratio of the length of the longest and shortest sides. An aspect ratio of 1
indicates a perfect square.
ANSYS Fluent: -
In ANSYS Fluent, the distance from the cell centroid to all the face centres and nodes are
calculated individually.

The AR is then taken as the ratio of the largest of these distances (L) and the smallest (S) of
these distances.

Note: - For perfect square, this method does not compute an AR of 1. Despites this difference,
this method is completely general and can be applied to skewed cells and cells with any
number of faces, therefore the slight difference in the AR calculation is not critically important.

OpenFOAM: -
The approach used by OpenFOAM to calculate the AR is different for 2D and 3D cell.

• 2-D Face:-

• 3-D Cell: -
o To compute the AR of 3D cells, a bounding box is constructed around the cell
first. A bounding box is cuboid that fully contains the cell and can always be
constructed around the 3D cell regardless of its shape by identifying the
maximum and minimum x, y and z coordinate of the nodes that make up the
cell. These maximum and minimum coordinates then become then corners of
the bounding box.
o Once the bounding box is constructed, AR is computed with following formula.
Largest Area of bounding box face
Aspect Ratio =
Smallest Area of bounding box face
 o With this approach, the aspect ratio of skewed cells and cells with any number of sides
can be calculated using the same approach. It is also relatively simple to implement in a
CFD code or mesh generator.

Bounding box can be constructed around the 3D cell regardless of its shape
It is desirable for solver stability to have aspect ratios as close to 1 as possible. This is because
cells with a high aspect ratio have faces with much larger areas than the others. These faces
have a much larger face flux contribution than the other faces. To demonstrate this point, refer
to the heat diffusion equation.

From the finite volume discretisation, above equation can be written as

The summation occurs over all the faces of the cell. If one cell has a much larger area (Af) than
the other faces of the cell, then this face dominates the contribution from the other faces. This
can lead to instability in the system of equations if the aspect ratios are too large.

Jacobian Determinant or Determinant: -

The Jacobian Determinant is a check of whether any of the cell faces are inverted. An inverted
cell has one or more of its nodes collapsed inwards towards the centre of the cell. This results
in an internal angle greater than 180◦.

Determinant is a Check of Inversion of Cell Faces

 • The mesh generator computes the Jacobian Determinant for each face of each cell and
then gives the lowest value (Corresponds to the worst face).
• Jacobian Determinant values less than 0 indicate that the cell has one or more inverted
faces, while a Jacobian Determinant value greater than 0 indicates that none of the
faces are inverted.
• It is generally recommended that all the cells in the mesh have a Jacobian Determinant
greater than 0.2. However, CFD codes can often still solve successfully with Jacobian
Determinant values as low as 0.1.
• Some mesh generators offer the option of calculating the ‘Determinant 2x2x2’ or the
‘Determinant 3x3x3’. These options are included because mesh generators can create
finite element meshes, as well as finite volume meshes.

Linear (CFD) and Non-Linear High-order Finite Element Cells

• Finite element meshes can use higher-order elements, where the faces of the element
contain extra nodes. The extra node allows the quantity to vary non-linearly across the
element, increasing the accuracy of the solution. However, because of the additional
node, the Jacobian Determinant calculation is slightly different. The Jacobian
Determinant calculation for higher-order elements is referred to as the Determinant
3x3x3 (where the 3 refers to the number of nodes along the face) rather than the
Determinant 2x2x2.

Equiangle Skewness: -
• The equiangle skewness for a face is the departure of the face shape from a perfect
(regular) polygon with the same number of sides.
• The equiangle skewness gives the quick check for cells having the poor non-
orthogonality.
• The equiangle skewness for a triangular and quadrilateral face is the departure of the
corner angles from a perfect triangle (60◦) and from a perfect quadrilateral (90◦)
respectively.

Angle Concerned with Different Kind of Polygon

 • Equilateral angle θe is defined as:

• The equiangle skewness eface for a face is defined as

• The equiangle skewness is based on the worst angle of the face. Where θmax and θmin
are the maximum and minimum corner angles on the face. This equation is general
and can be applied to any N sided face.
• A perfect triangular or quadrilateral face will result in an equiangle skewness of 0. A
corner angle less than 0◦ or greater than 180◦ indicates that the face is inverted and
will result in an equiangle skewness greater than 1.

Note:-
• While constructing mesh, user should aim for equiangle skewness as low as possible.
• ANSYS Fluent recommends that all cells in the mesh should have an equiangle
skewness less than 0.95.
• Any cells with an equiangle skewness greater than 1 have inverted faces and will cause
CFD solver to fail so these faces must be corrected before a solution is attempted.

Non-Orthogonality: -
Consider two cells are connected by a shared face. Vector that connects the cell centroid is d
and shared face normal vector is 𝑛̂.

Shared faces between two cells

Face non-orthogonality is the main matric which directly affect CFD solution stability. The
Face Non-Orthogonality Angle (θ) is defined as the angle between cell centroid vector (d)
and the unit normal vector (𝑛̂). Mathematically, it can be defined as

(For Faces)

Above expression is used by OpenFOAM. Here θ = 0 gives the perfect orthogonal face and θ<70
is usually ok for OpenFOAM. Angle more than 90 means face is collapsed, and cell is inverted.
 • Once the face non-orthogonality has been calculated for all the faces in the mesh, the
cell non-orthogonality (θcell) is taken as the highest non-orthogonality angle of the faces
that make up that cell.
θcell = max (θface1, θface2, θface3, ...θfaceN)
• If cell is not aligned (non-coplanar) i.e., if they are at different plane then d, as we have
taken it earlier, might not be good vector to use because Face Non-orthogonality Angle
(θ) may look like 0° as shown in figure-1, which is not correct, so an alternative idea is
to define the vector d is the vector c from cell centroid to shared face centre as shown
in figure-2. In this case, the angle between vector c and shared face normal vector n
would be θ = 30°.

• Ansys Fluent and CFX calculate θ using both c and d for all the faces in generated mesh
cells and then takes the largest angle (In the concept of the cell based non-
orthogonality).

• This is called cell orthogonal quality by Ansys where θcell is normalised to give values
from 0 to 1 rather than 0 to 90 to calculate the non-orthogonal quality of the mesh.

• For non-orthogonality quality, it is desirable to have values as close to 1 as possible.

Regardless of the metric employed, it is desirable to have the unit normal vector and
the centroid-to-centroid vector are as close to parallel as possible, to ensure a stable
CFD solution.

Recommended values for various mesh quality metrics

Inflation Layer in CFD: -

• In finite volume method, parameter values from one cell centroid to another cell
centroid varies linearly but in real life, velocity or temperature gradient varies non-
linearly near to the wall so to capture the steep variable gradient near the wall, we need
to generate the prism layers.
 Non-linear variation of velocity profile near to the wall
• The gradient along the wall (𝜕𝑢/𝜕𝑥) is much smaller than the gradient normal to the
wall (𝜕𝑢/𝜕𝑦). Here boundary layer thickness 𝛿 99 is the position normal to the wall
where velocity is increased by 99% of the free stream velocity.

Large number of cells are required to capture the near wall steep gradient
• Meshing software generates the prism layers automatically but user must define the
number of prism layers, growth ratio and height of the first layer.

Near Wall Prism Layer to Capture the Boundary Layer

• Height of the first layer (yH) is calculated to achieve the value of required y+. Note that
we should give the input to the software yH not yp.

Solver input is yH not yP

• Total boundary layer thickness 𝛿 99 should be contained within the prism/inflation
layer.

Prism height should be enough to capture the BL

• Height of total layer in the prism can be calculated as following. Suppose initially there
are two layers where first layer height is yH and growth ratio is G then total height of
the prism layer would be
 Calculation of Prism Layer Thickness
• Similarly, Height of N number of layers in the prism

So total height of inflation layer,

• Calculation of boundary layer thickness (𝛿 99)

But different correlation is required for different applications for eg. Internal flow,
natural convection etc.
• Good guess for deciding the growth ratio according to various post, paper and
discussions is
1. By keeping the number of layers more than 10 (N> 10) for (y+ ~ 30)
2. And by keeping the number of layers more than 25 (N> 25) for (y+ ~ 1)
This was the procedure to generate a mesh based on a good guess but for the final
verification of good guess should be done after the flow simulation whether prism layer
is enough to capture the boundary layer or not.
• There are few ways to check the suitability of our generated prism layer.
1. Generate the y+ contour plot and check the maximum y+ achieved in the mesh. If
y+ is too high than assumed earlier (suppose y+ = 1) then regenerate the mesh by
reducing the first layer height by the factor of maximum y+ achieved in the mesh.

Optimisation of Grid
2. Volume transition from final height of prism layer to tetrahedron (triangle for
2-D case) (Free stream of the flow) should be very smooth for divergence free
behaviour of solver.
 Smooth volume transition is an important factor for stability and
accuracy of CFD solution

3. If volume transition is too large, then either we can increase the number of prism
layer (recommended) or we can increase growth rate of the prism layer.
4. Increasing the growth ratio is not recommended because it reduces the accuracy
of the results. Growth rate should be always in the range of 1.05 to 1.3.
5. Sudden volume transition is bad for both RANS and LES simulation. In LES, sub-
grid viscosity (νsgv) in the cell is function of cell volume so sudden change in cell
volume leads to sudden change in flow viscosity.

In LES, Sub-grid viscosity (νsgv) in the cell is function of cell volume

6. In RANS, sudden change in volume leads to an error in the local gradient of
velocity and temperature profile which may affect the accuracy of wall shear stress
and wall heat transfer.

In RANS, sudden change in volume affect the variable gradient

7. Mesh refinement study is necessary for the accuracy of the CFD solution. Both first
layer height and growth ratio may affect the accuracy of the solution. Here is a
given case with different value of simulated result with different value of first
prism layer height and growth rate.

Mesh independent study in necessary for getting accurate solution

Calculation of First Layer Height of our CFD mesh: -
Formula to calculate the first layer height is derived from dimensionless wall normal distance
(Y+), which is defined as

First layer height (yh) can be written as 𝑦 ℎ = 2 ∗ 𝑦𝑝 , we should give the input in the
software as yh not yp while setting the prism layer height. Here yp is cell centroid distance from
the wall and defined as

Here µ is dynamic viscosity of the fluid and uτ is friction velocity, defined as

Here τw is wall shear stress and defined as

Here Cf is skin friction coefficient. There is a lot of formula by which we can calculate the skin
friction coefficient (Cf) but at the time of choosing the formula we need to be insured that BL
is fully turbulent. The following empirical formula is defined for fully turbulent flow on flat
plate.

Reynolds’s number can be calculated using

Here L is characteristic length. U is free stream velocity.

Improving Y+: -
• Suppose we generated our mesh according to the given first layer height as discussed
earlier and our target Y+ is less than 1.
• After running the simulation, we should check our Y+ over the solution domain in post
processing. If Y+ is not less than 1 in post processing in certain critical area, then we
should refine our mesh and should run our simulation again.
• Repeat this process until we achieve our targeted Y+ in post processing.

Mesh refinement is necessary until we are not getting our required y+

 • Y+ varies over the whole surface so we should priorities Y + in the area we care about.
As we are refining our mesh, Y+ is going down throughout the surface, the section of
LE and TE is important in airfoil so Y+ in this area should be less than targeted values
to capture the flow physics.

Unstructured grids: - This is typically formed from simplexes such as tetrahedron and
the fact they have no repeating structure which makes it very difficult to create and compute
the necessary cell-to-cell connectivity for CFD. The random orientation of an unstructured
grid can be led to awkward interfaces within the grid, possibly reducing the final accuracy of
the solution.

Topology improvement: - Due to increased geometrical complexity, the auto-mesh

generation is economical compromise between cost and accuracy. However, no auto mesh
generation algorithm can generate mesh without having a few elements having poor quality.
These elements need to be improved without repeating the complete process. This is called
topology improvements.
Laplacian Smoothing: This smoothing technique places each vertex at centroid of its
neighbouring vertices. Element’s connectivity doesn't change. This is an “auto smoothing”
process which does not give desired improvement always.
Difference between “Mesh Generation” and “Discretization”: -
Mesh generation is the process of dividing the computational domain into discrete (& finite)
smaller domain whereas Discretization method is a method of approximation of the
differential equations by a system of algebraic equations for field variables at some set of
discrete locations in space (generated during Meshing operation) and time.

Distinction between FEA Mesh & CFD Mesh:

1. CFD meshes consist of 1st order elements only, but 2nd order elements are always desirable
for FEA analysis. Emphasis is always on Boundary layer Resolution for CFD analysis but for
FEA analysis, Emphasis is always on finer elements near load and reaction points.
3. CFD elements do not possess any information except Material Definition. FEA elements
may possess specific definition like Spring-, Mass-, Bar-, Rod-, Rigid-, Rigid Link-, Joint-,
Gap-, Weld-Elements
4. FEA software vendors develop their own library of Elements for ease of Modelling.

The Delaunay criterion: - It is also called empty sphere property which states that any
node must not be contained within the circumsphere of any tetrahedral within the mesh. The
Delaunay criterion is not an algorithm but provides the criteria for which to connect a set of
existing points in space. A circumsphere can be defined as the sphere passing through all four
vertices of a tetrahedron.

• There are basically three grid types by their connectivity of points - Structured,
Unstructured and Hybrid Grid. Structured mesh has the regular connectivity which
means that each point has the same number of neighbours. On other hand,
unstructured mesh has the irregular connectivity where each point can have different
number of neighbours.
• Numerical algorithm written to use unstructured grid can be also used on structured
grid but vice versa is not true.
• Method of grid generation – Algebraic or Based on differential equation
(Elliptical/Parabolic/Hyperbolic)
Types of grid Topology: -
Topology refers the way by which computational region is mapped.
o 2-D Topology: - H- Type/ O – Type/ C - Type
o 3-D Topology: - These are combination of 2D topologies for example: - HH-type /OO-
type /CH-type /OH-type /CO-type

H-Type Grid

C-Type Grid

O-Type Grid
H-Type Grid: - Good for complex region but requires large number of points
O-Type Grid: - Suitable for cylinder type body but requires a smaller number of points
C-Type Grid: - Good for resolving wake flow but number of points required lies between H-
Type and O-Type.
For complex body, multiblock grid provides better control over grid quality.