Time-accurate anisotropic mesh adaptation for three-dimensional time-dependent problems with body-fitted moving geometries

Anisotropic metric-based mesh adaptation has proved its efficiency to reduce the CPU time of steady and unsteady simulations while improving their accuracy. However, its extension to time-dependent problems with body-fitted moving geometries is far from straightforward. This paper establishes a well-founded framework for multiscale mesh adaptation of unsteady problems with moving boundaries. This framework is based on a novel space-time analysis of the interpolation error, within the continuous mesh theory. An optimal metric field, called ALE metric field, is derived, which takes into account the movement of the mesh during the adaptation. Based on this analysis, the global fixed-point adaptation algorithm for time-dependent simulations is extended to moving boundary problems, within the range of body-fitted moving meshes and ALE simulations. Finally, three dimensional adaptive simulations with moving boundaries are presented to validate the proposed approach.