Semi-Implicit Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Viscous Compressible Flows

We deal with the numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations describing a motion of viscous compressible fluids. In order to obtain a sufficiently stable higher order scheme with respect to the time and space coordinates, we develop a combination of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element (DGFE) method for the space discretization and the backward difference formulae (BDF) for the time discretization. Since the resulting discrete problem leads to a system of nonlinear algebraic equations at each time step, we employ suitable linearizations of inviscid as well as viscous fluxes which give a linear algebraic problem at each time step. Finally, the resulting BDF-DGFE scheme is applied to steady as well as unsteady flows and achieved results are compared with reference data.     

A High-Order Central ENO Finite-Volume Scheme for Three-Dimensional Low-Speed Viscous Flows on Unstructured Mesh

High-order discretization techniques offer the potential to significantly reduce the computational costs necessary to obtain accurate predictions when compared to lower-order methods. However, efficient and universally-applicable high-order discretizations remain somewhat illusive, especially for more arbitrary unstructured meshes and for incompressible/low-speed flows. A novel, high-order, central essentially non-oscillatory (CENO), cell-centered, finite-volume scheme is proposed for the solution of the conservation equations of viscous, incompressible flows on three-dimensional unstructured meshes. Similar to finite element methods, coordinate transformations are used to maintain the scheme's order of accuracy even when dealing with arbitrarily-shaped cells having non-planar faces. The proposed scheme is applied to the pseudo-compressibility formulation of the steady and unsteady Navier-Stokes equations and the resulting discretized equations are solved with a parallel implicit Newton-Krylov algorithm. For unsteady flows, a dual-time stepping approach is adopted and the resulting temporal derivatives are discretized using the family of high-order backward difference formulas (BDF). The proposed finite-volume scheme for fully unstructured mesh is demonstrated to provide both fast and accurate solutions for steady and unsteady viscous flows.     

Numerical Simulation of Compressible Vortical Flows Using a Conservative Unstructured-Grid Adaptive Scheme

A two-dimensional numerical scheme for the compressible Euler equations is presented and applied here to the simulation of exemplary compressible vortical flows. The proposed approach allows to perform computations on unstructured moving grids with adaptation, which is required to capture complex features of the flow-field. Grid adaptation is driven by suitable error indicators based on the Mach number and by element-quality constraints as well. At the new time level, the computational grid is obtained by a suitable combination of grid smoothing, edge-swapping, grid refinement and de-refinement. The grid modifications—including topology modification due to edge-swapping or the insertion/deletion of a new grid node—are interpreted at the flow solver level as continuous (in time) deformations of suitably-defined node-centered finite volumes. The solution over the new grid is obtained without explicitly resorting to interpolation techniques, since the definition of suitable interface velocities allows one to determine the new solution by simple integration of the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation of the flow equations. Numerical simulations of the steady oblique-shock problem, of the steady transonic flow and of the start-up unsteady flow around the NACA 0012 airfoil are presented to assess the scheme capabilities to describe these flows accurately.     

A Jacobian-Free Newton Krylov Implicit-Explicit Time Integration Method for Incompressible Flow Problems

We have introduced a fully second order IMplicit/EXplicit (IMEX) time integration technique for solving the compressible Euler equations plus nonlinear heat conduction problems (also known as the radiation hydrodynamics problems) in Kadioglu et al., J. Comp. Physics [22,24]. In this paper, we study the implications when this method is applied to the incompressible Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations. The IMEX method is applied to the incompressible flow equations in the following manner. The hyperbolic terms of the flow equations are solved explicitly exploiting the well understood explicit schemes. On the other hand, an implicit strategy is employed for the non-hyperbolic terms. The explicit part is embedded in the implicit step in such a way that it is solved as part of the non-linear function evaluation within the framework of the Jacobian-Free Newton Krylov (JFNK) method [8,29,31]. This is done to obtain a self-consistent implementation of the IMEX method that eliminates the potential order reduction in time accuracy due to the specific operator separation. We employ a simple yet quite effective fractional step projection methodology (similar to those in [11,19,21,30]) as our preconditioner inside the JFNK solver. We present results from several test calculations. For each test, we show second order time convergence. Finally, we present a study for the algorithm performance of the JFNK solver with the new projection method based preconditioner.     

Kinetic Energy Preserving and Entropy Stable Finite Volume Schemes for Compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes Equations

Centered numerical fluxes can be constructed for compressible Euler equations which preserve kinetic energy in the semi-discrete finite volume scheme. The essential feature is that the momentum flux should be of the form where are any consistent approximations to the pressure and the mass flux. This scheme thus leaves most terms in the numerical flux unspecified and various authors have used simple averaging. Here we enforce approximate or exact entropy consistency which leads to a unique choice of all the terms in the numerical fluxes. As a consequence, a novel entropy conservative flux that also preserves kinetic energy for the semi-discrete finite volume scheme has been proposed. These fluxes are centered and some dissipation has to be added if shocks are present or if the mesh is coarse. We construct scalar artificial dissipation terms which are kinetic energy stable and satisfy approximate/exact entropy condition. Secondly, we use entropy-variable based matrix dissipation flux which leads to kinetic energy and entropy stable schemes. These schemes are shown to be free of entropy violating solutions unlike the original Roe scheme. For hypersonic flows a blended scheme is proposed which gives carbuncle free solutions for blunt body flows. Numerical results for Euler and Navier-Stokes equations are presented to demonstrate the performance of the different schemes.     

An All-Speed Asymptotic-Preserving Method for the Isentropic Euler and Navier-Stokes Equations

The computation of compressible flows becomes more challenging when the Mach number has different orders of magnitude. When the Mach number is of order one, modern shock capturing methods are able to capture shocks and other complex structures with high numerical resolutions. However, if the Mach number is small, the acoustic waves lead to stiffness in time and excessively large numerical viscosity, thus demanding much smaller time step and mesh size than normally needed for incompressible flow simulation. In this paper, we develop an all-speed asymptotic preserving (AP) numerical scheme for the compressible isentropic Euler and Navier-Stokes equations that is uniformly stable and accurate for all Mach numbers. Our idea is to split the system into two parts: one involves a slow, nonlinear and conservative hyperbolic system adequate for the use of modern shock capturing methods and the other a linear hyperbolic system which contains the stiff acoustic dynamics, to be solved implicitly. This implicit part is reformulated into a standard pressure Poisson projection system and thus possesses sufficient structure for efficient fast Fourier transform solution techniques. In the zero Mach number limit, the scheme automatically becomes a projection method-like incompressible solver. We present numerical results in one and two dimensions in both compressible and incompressible regimes.     

On the Stability and CPU Time of the Implicit Runge-Kutta Schemes for Steady State Simulations

Implicit time integration schemes are popular because their relaxed stability constraints can result in better computational efficiency. For time-accurate unsteady simulations, it has been well recognized that the inherent dispersion and dissipation errors of implicit Runge-Kutta schemes will reduce the computational accuracy for large time steps. Yet for steady state simulations using the time-dependent governing equations, these errors are often overlooked because the intermediate solutions are of less interest. Based on the model equation dy/dt = (µ+iλ)y of scalar convection diffusion systems, this study examines the stability limits, dispersion and dissipation errors of four diagonally implicit Runge-Kutta-type schemes on the complex (µ+iλ)∆t plane. Through numerical experiments, it is shown that, as the time steps increase, the A-stable implicit schemes may not always have reduced CPU time and the computations may not always remain stable, due to the inherent dispersion and dissipation errors of the implicit Runge-Kutta schemes. The dissipation errors may decelerate the convergence rate, and the dispersion errors may cause large oscillations of the numerical solutions. These errors, especially those of high wavenumber components, grow at large time steps. They lead to difficulty in the convergence of the numerical computations, and result in increasing CPU time or even unstable computations as the time step increases. It is concluded that an optimal implicit time integration scheme for steady state simulations should have high dissipation and low dispersion.     

An Implicit Algorithm for High-Order DG/FV Schemes for Compressible Flows on 2D Arbitrary Grids

A Newton/LU-SGS (lower-upper symmetric Gauss-Seidel) iteration implicit method was developed to solve two-dimensional Euler and Navier-Stokes equations by the DG/FV hybrid schemes on arbitrary grids. The Newton iteration was employed to solve the nonlinear system, while the linear system was solved with LU-SGS iteration. The effect of several parameters in the implicit scheme, such as the CFL number, the Newton sub-iteration steps, and the update frequency of Jacobian matrix, was investigated to evaluate the performance of convergence history. Several typical test cases were simulated, and compared with the traditional explicit Runge-Kutta (RK) scheme. Firstly the Couette flow was tested to validate the order of accuracy of the present DG/FV hybrid schemes. Then a subsonic inviscid flow over a bump in a channel was simulated and the effect of parameters was alsoinvestigated. Finally, the implicit algorithm was applied to simulate a subsonic inviscid flow over a circular cylinder and the viscous flow in a square cavity. The numerical results demonstrated that the present implicit scheme can accelerate the convergence history efficiently. Choosing proper parameters would improve the efficiency of the implicit scheme. Moreover, in the same framework, the DG/FV hybrid schemes are more efficient than the same order DG schemes.     

A Scalable Numerical Method for Simulating Flows Around High-Speed Train Under Crosswind Conditions

This paper presents a parallel Newton-Krylov-Schwarz method for the numerical simulation of unsteady flows at high Reynolds number around a high-speed train under crosswind. With a realistic train geometry, a realistic Reynolds number, and a realistic wind speed, this is a very challenging computational problem. Because of the limited parallel scalability, commercial CFD software is not suitable for supercomputers with a large number of processors. We develop a Newton-Krylov-Schwarz based fully implicit method, and the corresponding parallel software, for the 3D unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations discretized with a stabilized finite element method on very fine unstructured meshes. We test the algorithm and software for flows passing a train modeled after China's high-speed train CRH380B, and we also compare our results with results obtained from commercial CFD software. Our algorithm shows very good parallel scalability on a supercomputer with over one thousand processors.     

Variable High-Order Multiblock Overlapping Grid Methods for Mixed Steady and Unsteady Multiscale Viscous Flows,Part II: Hypersonic Nonequilibrium Flows

The variable high-order multiblock overlapping (overset) grids method of Sjögreen & Yee [CiCP, Vol. 5, 2009] for a perfect gas has been extended to nonequilibrium flows. This work makes use of the recently developed high-order well-balanced shock-capturing schemes and their filter counterparts [Wang et al., J. Comput. Phys., 2009, 2010] that exactly preserve certain non-trivial steady state solutions of the chemical nonequilibrium governing equations. Multiscale turbulence with strong shocks and flows containing both steady and unsteady components is best treated by mixing of numerical methods and switching on the appropriate scheme in the appropriate subdomains of the flow fields, even under the multiblock grid or adaptive grid refinement framework. While low dissipative sixth- or higher-order shock-capturing filter methods are appropriate for unsteady turbulence with shocklets, second- and third-order shock-capturing methods are more effective for strong steady or nearly steady shocks in terms of convergence. It is anticipated that our variable high-order overset grid framework capability with its highly modular design will allow for an optimum synthesis of these new algorithms in such a way that the most appropriate spatial discretizations can be tailored for each particular region of the flow. In this paper some of the latest developments in single block high-order filter schemes for chemical nonequilibrium flows are applied to overset grid geometries. The numerical approach is validated on a number of test cases characterized by hypersonic conditions with strong shocks, including the reentry flow surrounding a 3D Apollo-like NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle that might contain mixed steady and unsteady components, depending on the flow conditions.     

A Compact Third-Order Gas-Kinetic Scheme for Compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes Equations

In this paper, a compact third-order gas-kinetic scheme is proposed for the compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. The main reason for the feasibility to develop such a high-order scheme with compact stencil, which involves only neighboring cells, is due to the use of a high-order gas evolution model. Besides the evaluation of the time-dependent flux function across a cell interface, the high-order gas evolution model also provides an accurate time-dependent solution of the flow variables at a cell interface. Therefore, the current scheme not only updates the cell averaged conservative flow variables inside each control volume, but also tracks the flow variables at the cell interface at the next time level. As a result, with both cell averaged and cell interface values, the high-order reconstruction in the current scheme can be done compactly. Different from using a weak formulation for high-order accuracy in the Discontinuous Galerkin method, the current scheme is based on the strong solution, where the flow evolution starting from a piecewise discontinuous high-order initial data is precisely followed. The cell interface time-dependent flow variables can be used for the initial data reconstruction at the beginning of next time step. Even with compact stencil, the current scheme has third-order accuracy in the smooth flow regions, and has favorable shock capturing property in the discontinuous regions. It can be faithfully used from the incompressible limit to the hypersonic flow computations, and many test cases are used to validate the current scheme. In comparison with many other high-order schemes, the current method avoids the use of Gaussian points for the flux evaluation along the cell interface and the multi-stage Runge-Kutta time stepping technique. Due to its multidimensional property of including both derivatives of flow variables in the normal and tangential directions of a cell interface, the viscous flow solution, especially those with vortex structure, can be accurately captured. With the same stencil of a second order scheme, numerical tests demonstrate that the current scheme is as robust as well-developed second-order shock capturing schemes, but provides more accurate numerical solutions than the second order counterparts.     

A Preliminary Calculation of Three-Dimensional Unsteady Underwater Cavitating Flows Near Incompressible Limit

Recently, cavitated flows over underwater submerged bodies have attracted researchers to simulate large scale cavitation. Comparatively Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches have been used widely and successfully to model developed cavitation. However, it is still a great challenge to accurately predict cavitated flow phenomena associated with interface capturing, viscous effects, unsteadiness and three-dimensionality. In this study, we consider the preconditioned three-dimensional multiphase Navier-Stokes equations comprised of the mixture density, mixture momentum and constituent volume fraction equations. A dual-time implicit formulation with LU Decomposition is employed to accommodate the inherently unsteady physics. Also, we adopt the Roe flux splitting method to deal with flux discretization in space. Moreover, time-derivative preconditioning is used to ensure well-conditioned eigenvalues of the high density ratio two-phase flow system to achieve computational efficiency. Validation cases include an unsteady 3-D cylindrical headform cavitated flow and an 2-D convergent-divergent nozzle channel cavity-problem.     

Adaptive Fully Implicit Simulator with Multilevel Schwarz Methods for Gas Reservoir Flows in Fractured Porous Media

Large-scale reservoir modeling and simulation of gas reservoir flows in fractured porous media is currently an important topic of interest in petroleum engineering. In this paper, the dual-porosity dual-permeability (DPDP) model coupled with the Peng-Robinson equation of state (PR-EoS) is used for the mathematical model of the gas reservoir flow in fractured porous media. We develop and study a parallel and highly scalable reservoir simulator based on an adaptive fully implicit scheme and an inexact Newton type method to solve this dual-continuum mathematical model. In the approach, an explicit-first-step, single-diagonal-coefficient, diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta (ESDIRK) method with adaptive time stepping is proposed for the fully implicit discretization, which is second-order and L-stable. And then we focus on the family of Newton–Krylov methods for the solution of a large sparse nonlinear system of equations arising at each time step. To accelerate the convergence and improve the scalability of the solver, a class of multilevel monolithic additive Schwarz methods is employed for preconditioning. Numerical results on a set of ideal as well as realistic flow problems are used to demonstrate the efficiency and the robustness of the proposed methods. Experiments on a supercomputer with several thousand processors are also carried out to show that the proposed reservoir simulator is highly scalable.     

A DDG Method with a Residual-Based Artificial Viscosity for the Transonic/Supersonic Compressible Flow

In this work, a direct discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) method with artificial viscosity is developed to solve the compressible Navier-Stokes equations for simulating the transonic or supersonic flow, where the DDG approach is used to discretize viscous and heat fluxes. A strong residual-based artificial viscosity (AV) technique is proposed to be applied in the DDG framework to handle shock waves and layer structures appearing in transonic or supersonic flow, which promotes convergence and robustness. Moreover, the AV term is added to classical BR2 methods for comparison. A number of 2-D and 3-D benchmarks such as airfoils, wings, and a full aircraft are presented to assess the performance of the DDG framework with the strong residual-based AV term for solving the two dimensional and three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The proposed framework provides an alternative robust and efficient approach for numerically simulating the multi-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations for transonic or supersonic flow.     

Time Implicit Unified Gas Kinetic Scheme for 3D Multi-Group Neutron Transport Simulation

In this paper, a time implicit unified gas kinetic scheme (IUGKS) for 3D multi-group neutron transport equation with delayed neutron is developed. The explicit scheme, implicit 1st-order backward Euler scheme, and 2nd-order Crank-Nicholson scheme, become the subsets of the current IUGKS. In neutron transport, the microscopic angular flux and the macroscopic scalar flux are fully coupled in an implicit way with the combination of dual-time step technique for the convergence acceleration of unsteady evolution. In IUGKS, the computational time step is no longer limited by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition, which improves the computational efficiency in both steady and unsteady simulations with a large time step. Mathematically, the current scheme has the asymptotic preserving (AP) property in recovering automatically the diffusion solution in the continuum regime. Since the explicit scanning along neutron traveling direction within the computational domain is not needed in IUGKS, the scheme can be easily extended to multi-dimensional and parallel computations. The numerical tests demonstrate that the IUGKS has high computational efficiency, high accuracy, and strong robustness when compared with other schemes, such as the explicit UGKS, the commonly used finite difference, and finite volume methods. This study shows that the IUGKS can be used faithfully to study neutron transport in practical engineering applications.     

A Parallel,Reconstructed Discontinuous Galerkin Method for the Compressible Flows on Arbitrary Grids

A reconstruction-based discontinuous Galerkin method is presented for the solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations on arbitrary grids. In this method, an in-cell reconstruction is used to obtain a higher-order polynomial representation of the underlying discontinuous Galerkin polynomial solution and an inter-cell reconstruction is used to obtain a continuous polynomial solution on the union of two neighboring, interface-sharing cells. The in-cell reconstruction is designed to enhance the accuracy of the discontinuous Galerkin method by increasing the order of the underlying polynomial solution. The inter-cell reconstruction is devised to remove an interface discontinuity of the solution and its derivatives and thus to provide a simple, accurate, consistent, and robust approximation to the viscous and heat fluxes in the Navier-Stokes equations. A parallel strategy is also devised for the resulting reconstruction discontinuous Galerkin method, which is based on domain partitioning and Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) parallel programming model. The RDG method is used to compute a variety of compressible flow problems on arbitrary meshes to demonstrate its accuracy, efficiency, robustness, and versatility. The numerical results demonstrate that this RDG method is third-order accurate at a cost slightly higher than its underlying second-order DG method, at the same time providing a better performance than the third order DG method, in terms of both computing costs and storage requirements.     

Kinetic Slip Boundary Condition for Isothermal Rarefied Gas Flows Through Static Non-Planar Geometries Based on the Regularized Lattice-Boltzmann Method

The simulation of rarefied gas flows through complex porous media is challenging due to the tortuous flow pathways inherent to such structures. The Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has been identified as a promising avenue to solve flows through complex geometries due to the simplicity of its scheme and its high parallel computational efficiency. It has been proposed to model the stress-strain relationship with the extended Navier-Stokes equations rather than attempting to directly solve the Boltzmann equation. However, a regularization technique is required to filter out non-resolved higher-order components with a low-order velocity scheme. Although slip boundary conditions (BCs) have been proposed for the non-regularized multiple relaxation time LBM (MRT-LBM) for planar geometries, previous slip BCs have never been verified extensively with the regularization technique. In this work, following an extensive literature review on the imposition of slip BCs for rarefied flows with the LBM, it is proven that earlier values for kinetic parameters developed to impose slip BCs are inaccurate for the regularized MRT-LBM and differ between the D2Q9 and D3Q15 schemes. The error was eliminated for planar flows and good agreement between analytical solutions for arrays of cylinders and spheres was found with a wide range of Knudsen numbers.     

An Efficient DDG/FV Hybrid Method for 3D Viscous Flow Simulations on Tetrahedral Grids

A new hybrid reconstruction scheme DDG/FV is developed in this work by combining the DDG method and DG/FV hybrid scheme developed in the authors' previous work [1–4] to simulate three-dimensional compressible viscous flow on tetrahedral grids. The extended von Neumann stencils are used in the reconstruction process to ensure the linear stability, and the L₂ projection and the least-squares method are adopted to reconstruct higher order distributions for higher accuracy and robustness. In addition, a quadrature-free L₂ projection based on orthogonal basis functions is implemented to improve the efficiency of reconstruction. Three typical test cases, including the 3D Couette flow, laminar flows over an analytical 3D body of revolution and over a sphere, are simulated to validate the accuracy and efficiency of DDG/FV method. The numerical results demonstrate that the DDG scheme can accelerate the convergence history compared with widely-used BR2 scheme. More attractively, the new DDG/FV hybrid method can deliver the same accuracy as BR2-DG method with more than 2 times of efficiency improvement in solving 3D Navier-Stokes equations on tetrahedral grids, and even one-order of magnitude faster in some cases, which shows good potential in future realistic applications.     

Performance of Low-Dissipation Euler Fluxes and Preconditioned LU-SGS at Low Speeds

In low speed flow computations, compressible finite-volume solvers are known to a) fail to converge in acceptable time and b) reach unphysical solutions. These problems are known to be cured by A) preconditioning on the time-derivative term, and B) control of numerical dissipation, respectively. There have been several methods of A) and B) proposed separately. However, it is unclear which combination is the most accurate, robust, and efficient for low speed flows. We carried out a comparative study of several well-known or recently-developed low-dissipation Euler fluxes coupled with a preconditioned LU-SGS (Lower-Upper Symmetric Gauss-Seidel) implicit time integration scheme to compute steady flows. Through a series of numerical experiments, accurate, efficient, and robust methods are suggested for low speed flow computations.     

A Discrete Flux Scheme for Aerodynamic and Hydrodynamic Flows

The objective of this paper is to seek an alternative to the numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations by a method similar to solving the BGK-type modeled lattice Boltzmann equation. The proposed method is valid for both gas and liquid flows. A discrete flux scheme (DFS) is used to derive the governing equations for two distribution functions; one for mass and another for thermal energy. These equations are derived by considering an infinitesimally small control volume with a velocity lattice representation for the distribution functions. The zero-order moment equation of the mass distribution function is used to recover the continuity equation, while the first-order moment equation recovers the linear momentum equation. The recovered equations are correct to the first order of the Knudsen number (Kn); thus, satisfying the continuum assumption. Similarly, the zero-order moment equation of the thermal energy distribution function is used to recover the thermal energy equation. For aerodynamic flows, it is shown that the finite difference solution of the DFS is equivalent to solving the lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) with a BGK-type model and a specified equation of state. Thus formulated, the DFS can be used to simulate a variety of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic flows. Examples of classical aeroacoustics, compressible flow with shocks, incompressible isothermal and non-isothermal Couette flows, stratified flow in a cavity, and double diffusive flow inside a rectangle are used to demonstrate the validity and extent of the DFS. Very good to excellent agreement with known analytical and/or numerical solutions is obtained; thus lending evidence to the DFS approach as an alternative to solving the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow simulations.