Meshing

Note

This summary is based on/copied from [Dett19] with the authors permission.

A wing may have any number of leading and trailing edge control surfaces. In order generate a suitable VLM mesh, a systematic approach is required. Fig. 28 illustrates the general meshing algorithm. The planform geometry of an example wing is shown Fig. 28 (a). It has three segments as well as one leading edge device and three trailing edge devices. In a first meshing step, spanwise subdivisions are added at each segment or control surface border (Fig. 28 (b)). This ensures that control surface geometries are correctly captured. More spanwise division are added to produce a finer spanwise discretisation (Fig. 28 (c)). Finally, chordwise subdivisions are added, such that each resulting quadrilateral is a panel used in the VLM analysis (Fig. 28 (d)).

Fig. 28 Meshing algorithm