The well-studied and well-documented Backward Facing Step is useful to illustrate the steps outlined in this series. This problem is a part of the SU2 tutorials where a structured grid is used. Since our interest is in illustrating the procedure for arbitrarily complex flow domains, we’ll use a hybrid grid as detailed in this video. The video also outlines the problem setup – dimensions, BCs, export to SU2 etc.

Visualizing and querying the velocity field is a key part of understanding flow simulations. Whether it’s a close examination of the boundary layer, a precise extraction to correlate with experimental data, or a quick check on whether the flow has developed the way you expect it to, it’s always useful to review the velocity field. It’s not always easy, given the complicating factors that abound in flow simulations, but you can be sure Tecplot’s way of doing it is efficient, robust and – important! – automatable.

You can create point-clouds within Pointwise, as explained in this video, but you can also import point-clouds. Why would you want to do that? Watch this video to learn how imported point-cloud data can be used as sources to refine / coarsen the grid as you wish – note that this works for volume and for surface grids! In a subsequent step, we’ll see how Tecplot can be used to create this PCD for your solution.