Highlights of the Technical Committees in the CFD field include:

Applied Aerodynamics

• CFD was used in the design of a micro air vehicle optimized using a genetic algorithm. The work was sponsored by DARPA.
• NASA Glenn, Lockheed Martin, and the US Airforce Research Lab used CFD to optimize ultracompact inlet diffuser ducts.
• NASA Langley computed N-S solutions on multi-block grids for an advanced diamond wing concept. The results showed excellent agreement with data from the National Transonic Facility wind tunnel.
• NASA Ames computed high resolution solutions of a UH-60A helicopter in hover using meshes with 10.6 and 64 million grid points. In addition to providing a wealth of detailed flow field information, the results show that rotorcraft CFD simulations can provide accurate quantitative performance results as well.
• NASA's PAB3D solver was used to compute aeroacoustic solutions for round and chevron nozzles.
• ARL used FLUENT 5 to compute viscous solutions on lattice finned missiles. The article states: "Mesh generation is the challenge for this class of problems, because it is difficult to resolve the boundary layer flow around the missile body and the individual fin surfaces while keeping the model size manageable."
• A drag prediction workshop was held during the summer.

Fluid Dynamics

• For structured grid generation "Topology generation is the key element behind multiblock grid generation, where the blocks themselves are deployed in an unstructured manner."
• MIT and NASA Langley are working on assessment of CFD solution error as a criterion for grid adaption.
• NASA Langley has achieved textbook multigrid convergence on Euler computations on massively parallel architectures. N-S computations remain a challenge.
• Turbulence modeling activity focused on hybrid Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)/LES turbulence modeling. The approach employs traditional RANS turbulence models in the boundary layer and switches to LES in separated regions, improving results considerably over RANS modeling.
• ONERA and Rutgers University have achieved significant advancements in modeling 3D shock-wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions.

Plasmadynamics and Lasers

• The industry standard Multiblock Arbitrary Coordinate Hydromagnetic (MACH) code is being used to simulate high power electromagnetic plasma thrusters. See here and here.
• CFD was used to study a pulse detonation rocket engine for space power.

Thermophysics

• NASA Johnson and the Univ. Texas at Tyler have used CFD to study the processing of carbon nanotubes.