Cart3D is a high-fidelity inviscid analysis package for conceptual and preliminary aerodynamic design. It allows users to perform automated CFD analysis on complex geometry and supports steady and time-dependent simulations. The package features robust and fully-integrated adjoint-driven mesh adaptation and includes utilities for geometry import, surface modeling and intersection, mesh generation, and post-processing of results. The main flow solvers run in parallel using either shared memory (OpenMP) or distributed memory (MPI) with excellent scalability. The package is highly automated so that geometry acquisition and mesh generation can usually be performed within a few minutes on most current desktop computers.

Geometry enters into Cart3D in the form of surface triangulations. These may be generated from within a CAD packages, from legacy surface triangulations or from structured surface grids. Cart3D uses adaptively refined Cartesian grids to discretize the space around a geometry and  cuts the geometry out of the set of "cut-cells" which actually intersect the surface triangulation. With adjoint-based adaptation, meshes automatically refine as simulations evolve to reduce error in aerodynamic outputs. Flow solvers run in parallel and to take full advantage of multi-core and multi-cpu hardware.

The current release of Cart3D is v1.6.0. This release can be downloaded from the NASA Software Catalog and includes significant improvements and new tools. There are upgrades to the propulsion boundary conditions and mass-flow objective functions for adaptation and design. The solvers are faster, more robust and have lower dissipation. Cart3D's integrated adjoint-driven error-estimation and mesh refinement module has also been enhanced with full integration of the propulsion boundary conditions and support for farfield objective functions when coupling with NASA's sBOOM propagation code. Also included are new tools for simplifying deflection of control surfaces and other geometric manipulations. "Extras" include tools for automating setup of sonic-boom simulations a driver for 6-DOF simulations and scripts and examples for integrating with NASA's QUEST Uncertainty Quantification package..