This book covers a huge amount of advanced material, but is extremely well written and presented, making it easy and enjoyable to read, and this is aided by the excellent choice of results and illustrations used to complement the text. It is also so comprehensive it is doubtful there is an upper level of experience, either academic or practitioner, where this book wouldn't present something of interest. The main difference between this work and the author's excellent previous work, Unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics in Aeronautics (Springer, 2014), is this work is more implementation focussed, so more useful for code developers, but both works are extremely interesting.
The book comprises over 500 pages, split into eight chapters. The introductory chapter briefly introduces the need for numerical aerodynamics and the main methods of interest, and this is followed by detailed chapters covering: governing equations; mesh generation; numerical methods; turbulence; advanced simulation; pre- and post-processing; and simulation in the future. Each chapter includes a set of problems, both mathematical and code development, and its own citation list.
The governing equations chapter covers every conceivable form, including implications for numerics and boundary conditions and is illustrated with useful figures. This is followed by a mesh generation chapter, which is particularly interesting, covering in some detail implementation options, for example structured approaches using medial axis, cartesian fitting, automatic blocking, level set and wall-distance related methods, unstructured and hybrid including mesh control, and high-order methods. Excellent examples are presented, and mesh effect on solution quality is analysed. Grid refinement, de-refinement, adaptation and deformation are also covered.
Chapter 4 covers fundamental aspects of numerical methods, including spatial and temporal derivatives representations, high-order approaches including for unstructured, control volume options for finite-volume and dissipation/smoothing and stability. Alternative methods are also considered, including Lattice Boltzmann, SPH, vortex methods and boundary element approaches. Implementation details are also included, for example related to preconditioning, multigrid, and boundary conditions.
Turbulence and its modelling is covered in detail in Chapter 5. RANS is introduced and details of various turbulence models covered, including numerous corrections and updates that have been developed, transition modelling, free stream turbulence representation, and surface roughness. Again code implementation issues are discussed. URANS, DES, LES, and various hybrid options are then addressed in some detail. This is probably the most detailed and useful text I have read outside of a specialist turbulence modelling book.
Chapter 6 is entitled ‘Advanced Simulation’ and considers many aspects of applied use of numerical methods, including: design optimisation; optimisation and surrogate modelling approaches; multi-fidelity approaches; multi-physics approaches; various forms of reduced order models; coupled models; multi-scale problems; code-coupling methods; and acoustics is covered in significant detail. Again, excellent examples are presented for many test cases.
Pre- and post-processing methods are considered in Chapter 7, covering numerous issues from geometry and feature handling and their effects on mesh generation, wall distance calculations, required parameter definitions and considerations, through file formats, assessing convergence, to visualisation and feature detection.
The book is completed with a future outlook, including a discussion of the challenges in terms of applications and physics modelling, and algorithmic challenges particularly related to scalability and exploitation of emerging hardware.
In summary, this book would make very interesting reading for any graduate student, researcher or practitioner in the numerical aerodynamics field. It provides sufficient background and technical detail to be able to develop and understand detailed numerical methods and also covers some more advanced material in a manner that can be followed. It would make a valuable addition to the library of anyone with an interest in this area.
