Developments in industrial computational fluid dynamics

An overview is presented of the progress over the past decade in the development of CFD as an industrial tool, with particular emphasis on its geometry-handling capabilities. It is demonstrated that the introduction of highly flexible unstructured meshes, together with the ability to dynamically distort, slide, insert and remove selected regions, has enabled CFD to be applied to virtually all types of industrial equipment. When allied with advances in mesh generation, numerical solvers, physics modelling, user interfaces and computer hardware, the end result is a powerful capability which is increasingly being exploited for design purposes.