Historically, land-speed vehicles were shaped by rule of thumb aerodynamics. However in the 50 years since the first turbojet vehicle officially set a land-speed record, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has matured to a point where it can be inexpensively used to help simulate performance characteristics on such vehicles.

Leveraging Pointwise, TotalSim generated a hybrid grid, balancing mesh generation time and solution accuracy. Pointwise’s structured and unstructured meshing techniques coupled with T-Rex (anisotropic tetrahedral extrusion) were used to generate layers of unstructured hexahedra and prisms, helping to reduce the overall cell count and improve grid quality.

Simulation of land speed record challenge car.

Additionally, TotalSim was able to exploit the flexibility of Pointwise and manually adapt the grid to help resolve shock structures and more accurately predict vehicle performance.

Watch this recorded webinar to discover how to:

• Simplify a complex geometry using layers for organization
• Resolve areas of high curvature using structured meshing techniques
• Automatically generate contiguous viscous layers of unstructured hexahedra and prisms
• Effortlessly add local refinement to an existing volume mesh to improve solution accuracy
• Rapidly assess high-speed vehicle performance on a limited budget