Dynamical p-adaptivity for LES of compressible flows in a high order DG framework

We investigate the possibility of reducing the computational burden of LES configurations by employing locally and dynamically adaptive polynomial degrees in the framework of a high order DG method. A degree adaptation technique especially featured to be effective for LES applications, that was previously developed by the authors and tested in the statically adaptive case, is applied here in a dynamically adaptive fashion. In this first study, no dynamic load balancing was carried out. Two significant benchmarks are considered, comparing the results of adaptive and non-adaptive simulations. The proposed dynamically adaptive approach allows for a significant reduction of the computational cost of representative LES computation, while allowing to maintain the level of accuracy guaranteed by LES carried out with constant, maximum polynomial degree values. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.