One Post-Doctoral Fellow : High order / curvilinear mesh generation

There is a growing consensus that state of the art finite volume technology requires, and will continue to require too extensive computational resources to provide the necessary resolution, even at the rate that computational power increases. The requirement for high resolution naturally leads us to consider methods that have a higher order of grid convergence than the classical (formal) 2nd order provided by most industrial grade codes. This indicates that higher-order discretization methods will replace at some point the finite volume solvers of today, at least for part of their applications.

The development of high-order numerical technologies for CFD is underway for many years now. For example, Discontinuous Galerkin methods (DGM) have been largely studied in the litterature. It has been shown that the accuracy of the method strongly depends of the accuracy of the geometrical discretzation. In other words, the following question is raised: yes we have the high order methods, but how do we get the meshes?

Our research team is working for more than a decade on mesh generation. We are building an open source code (Gmsh, http://www.geuz.org/gmsh) that is maybe the most used open source mesh generation code in the world. We have recently been funded by the European Union, through the FP7 research program IDIHOM, to investigate curvilinear mesh generation techniques. No commercial mesh generation tool is capable of generating these meshes, and only a few academic, but still incomplete - in particular boundary layer functionality is missing – prototypes exist.

The successful candidate will work on the development of high order / curvilinear mesh generation techniques. The work will be done in the framework of Gmsh.
Applicants should have a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, computer science or equivalent. The open position is expected to be filled by October 1, 2010.
Applications, including CV and the name and address of an academic referee, should be made as soon as possible to Jean-François Remacle (jean-francois.remacle@uclouvain.be).