There is an ever increasing demand to perform flow simulations that incorporate the complete details of geometry as well as sophisticated flow physics. This has led to the development of numerical algorithms that can simulate the actual flow phenomena with greater fidelity. However, the success of these algorithms hinges on the grid that models the geometry. Grid generation methods for 2-D models have long existed and the general lack of complexity of the simpler 2-D models has not quite challenged the efforts in this area. However, demands for generating better 3-D geometric models for flow simulations involving complex geometries have completely changed the perspective of grid generation strategies. As a consequence, grid generation efforts have earned equal significance as that of numerical solver efforts. Structured meshes consisting of blocks of hexahedra and unstructured grids consisting of tetrahedra have been the traditional means of discretizing 3-D flow domains. Both approaches have been challenged in recent years as applications move to large scale turbulent flows with very complex geometries.
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