Effect of Tetrahedral Mesh Characteristics on the Accuracy of Modeling Supersonic Flow past an Axisymmetric Model

The effect of parameters of unstructured tetrahedral meshes on the results of simulation of viscous, heat-conducting gas flow past the standard HB-2 model at zero angle of attack and the Mach number equal to 1.5 is studied. The computational meshes are constructed using the freely available TetGen and Gmsh packages. The simulation is based on a system of regularized (quasi-gasdynamic) equations. It is shown that using the meshes that are superior in a combination of criteria (small cell size on the model surface, low degree of non-uniformity, high quality of cells) gives the simulation results closer to experimental data than using the meshes with inferior characteristics. Moreover, improving the mesh quality makes it possible to simulate unsteady flow regimes.