Advances in numerical methods for CREATE™-AV analysis tools

This work considers advances in numerical methods for future air vehicle Computational Research and Engineering for Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE™-AV) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers. CREATE™-AV is on the verge of adopting CFD methods that are beyond the current state of the art. In particular high-order spatial discretization methods for unstructured/semi-structured meshes are a large part of the future of CREATE™-AV computational fluid dynamics solvers. Adopting new spatial discretization methods is an involved process that motivates one to re-examine the CFD procedure as a whole. The goal of this work is to explain some emerging technologies that will enable enhanced accuracy, speed, robustness, and utility of CREATE™-AV software. The emerging technologies in this work include finite-element spatial integration techniques and full Newton solvers that are automatic and adapt to the flow solution state. Results of these techniques are shown for challenging two-dimensional test cases.