A Novel Surface Mesh Deformation Method for Component Intersections
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In aircraft design optimisation, the intersection curve between two components moves whenever either of them is modified, and the surface mesh near the intersection can then no longer be updated by treating the components as independent objects. Preserving mesh quality there is a prerequisite for resolving the junction flow. This paper presents a surface mesh deformation method for component intersections that requires only the parametric description of the components and the initial mesh. The intersection curve is recomputed from the updated parametric surfaces; the mesh points of the old intersection are mapped onto the new curve by arc-length normalisation, which defines their displacement; that displacement is imposed as a boundary condition and propagated over the surface meshes of both components by an inverse-distance weight integrated analytically along the intersection curve; and displaced points are re-projected onto their parent parametric surface. Because the same field is applied to both components, the two surface meshes meet on the recomputed intersection without a seam, whichever component carries the design change. The updated surface mesh finally drives the volume mesh. The formulation is written in physical space on the mesh points and does not use the mesh topology, so it applies to structured and unstructured meshes alike and to any pair of intersecting components. The method is validated on a fin-body configuration whose fin incidence is updated, a design change that migrates the intersection curve over both components. The surface mesh follows that change without being rebuilt: it conforms to the recomputed intersection curve, no surface cell is folded, and the cell-area and cell-quality distributions of the initial mesh are essentially preserved.
