Complex Mesh Motion With Automated Global Remeshing Approach With Mesh Clustering
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Accurate modelling of rotating and moving boundaries is essential for predicting flow and force distributions in engineering systems such as gearboxes, turbines, pumps, and bearings. Conventional mesh motion techniques, including sliding meshes and overset methods, suffer from limitations related to overlapping interfaces, interpolation errors, and high computational cost, restricting their use in complex multi-body rotating configurations. This study presents a Global Remeshing Approach with Mesh Clustering (GRAMC) framework for incompressible flow simulations in OpenFOAM. It relies on automated generation and cyclic reuse of a finite set of body-fitted meshes, with remeshing triggered only when mesh nonorthogonality exceeds a threshold, significantly reducing interpolation frequency. The approach is evaluated using Taylor-Couette flow, a rotating gear in a housing, and two rotating boxes within a stationary enclosure. GRAMC agrees well with analytical solutions, achieves accuracy comparable to the Arbitrary Mesh Interface approach, and is two to four times faster than the overset method. This framework provides a robust, solver-independent, and computationally efficient alternative for simulating complex moving geometries.
