Grid Refinement Study - Vortex Cooled Rocket Engine
Project Overview
This project applied a systematic grid refinement study in ANSYS Fluent to evaluate solution accuracy and establish grid independence. By refining the mesh and analyzing changes in simulation results, I quantified numerical error, verified solver reliability, and ensured confidence in the CFD predictions.
Problem Setup
Defined geometry and boundary conditions for the flow case.
Established baseline mesh, then created medium and fine meshes with consistent refinement ratios.
Simulation in ANSYS Fluent
Ran CFD simulations across all mesh levels under the same flow conditions.
Extracted engineering quantities of interest such as pressure distribution, velocity field, and wall shear stress.
Grid Convergence Analysis
Compared results between coarse, medium, and fine meshes.
Applied Richardson Extrapolation to estimate the asymptotic (true) solution.
Calculated Grid Convergence Index (GCI) to quantify numerical uncertainty.
Key Findings
Verified that results converged consistently with mesh refinement.
Demonstrated grid independence for the chosen output variables.
Highlighted trade-offs between computational cost and accuracy.
Grid Refinement Study
Simulation Results
