A physically based flux limiter for QUICK calculations of advective scalar transport

Transient, advective transport of a contaminant into a clean domain will exhibit a moving sharp front that separates contaminated and clean regions. Due to ‘numerical diffusion’—the combined effects of ‘cross‐wind diffusion’ and ‘artificial dispersion’—a numerical solution based on a first‐order (upwind) treatment will smear out the sharp front. The use of higher‐order schemes, e.g. QUICK (quadratic upwinding) reduces the smearing but can introduce non‐physical oscillations in the solution. A common approach to reduce numerical diffusion without oscillations is to use a scheme that blends low‐order and high‐order approximations of the advective transport. Typically, the blending is based on a parameter that measures the local monotonicity in the predicted scalar field. In this paper, an alternative approach is proposed for use in scalar transport problems where physical bounds C_Low?C?C_High on the scalar are known a priori. For this class of problems, the proposed scheme switches from a QUICK approximation to an upwind approximation whenever the predicted upwind nodal value falls outside of the physical range [C_Low, C_High]. On two‐dimensional steady‐state and one‐dimensional transient test problems predictions obtained with the proposed scheme are essentially indistinguishable from those obtained with monotonic flux‐limiter schemes. An analysis of the modified equation explains the observed performance of first‐ and second‐order time‐stepping schemes in predicting the advective transport of a step. In application to the transient two‐dimensional problem of contaminate transport into a streambed, predictions obtained with the proposed flux‐limiter scheme agree with those obtained with a scheme from the literature. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preserving bounded and conservative solutions of transport in one‐dimensional shallow‐water flow with upwind numerical schemes: Application to fertigation and solute transport in rivers

This work intends to show that conservative upwind schemes based on a separate discretization of the scalar solute transport from the shallow‐water equations are unable to preserve uniform solute profiles in situations of one‐dimensional unsteady subcritical flow. However, the coupled discretization of the system is proved to lead to the correct solution in first‐order approximations. This work is also devoted to show that, when using a coupled discretization, a careful definition of the flux limiter function in second‐order TVD schemes is required in order to preserve uniform solute profiles. The work shows that, in cases of subcritical irregular flow, the coupled discretization is necessary but nevertheless not sufficient to ensure concentration distributions free from oscillations and a method to avoid these oscillations is proposed. Examples of steady and unsteady flows in test cases, river and irrigation are presented. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Calculation of laminar flows with second-order schemes and collocated variable arrangement

A numerical study of laminar flows is carried out to examine the performance of two second-order discretization schemes: a total variation diminishing scheme and a second-order upwind scheme. The former has the same form as the standard first-order hybrid central upwind scheme, but with a numerical diffusion reduced by the Van Leer limiter; the latter is based on the linear extrapolation of cell face values using the two upwind neighbors. A collocated grid arrangement is used; oscillations which could be generated by pressure–velocity decoupling are avoided via the Rhie–Chow interpolation. Two iterative solution methods are used: (i) the deferred correction procedure proposed by Khosla and Rubin and (ii) implicit treatment of the second-order upwind contribution. Three two-dimensional laminar test cases are considered for assessment: the plane lid-driven cavity, the plane backward facing step and the axisymmetric pipe with sudden contraction. Experimental data are available for the two last cases. Both the total variation diminishing and the second-order upwind schemes give wiggle-free results and can predict the flowfields more accurately than the standard first-order hybrid central upwind scheme. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fourier analysis of several finite difference schemes for the one‐dimensional unsteady convection–diffusion equation

This paper reports a comparative study on the stability limits of nine finite difference schemes to discretize the one‐dimensional unsteady convection–diffusion equation. The tested schemes are: (i) fourth‐order compact; (ii) fifth‐order upwind; (iii) fourth‐order central differences; (iv) third‐order upwind; (v) second‐order central differences; and (vi) first‐order upwind. These schemes were used together with Runge–Kutta temporal discretizations up to order six. The remaining schemes are the (vii) Adams–Bashforth central differences, (viii) the Quickest and (ix) the Leapfrog central differences. In addition, the dispersive and dissipative characteristics of the schemes were compared with the exact solution for the pure advection equation, or simple first or second derivatives, and numerical experiments confirm the Fourier analysis. The results show that fourth‐order Runge–Kutta, together with central schemes, show good conditional stability limits and good dispersive and dissipative spectral resolution. Overall the fourth‐order compact is the recommended scheme. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite volume scheme preserving extremum principle for convection–diffusion equations on polygonal meshes

We propose a nonlinear finite volume scheme for convection–diffusion equation on polygonal meshes and prove that the discrete solution of the scheme satisfies the discrete extremum principle. The approximation of diffusive flux is based on an adaptive approach of choosing stencil in the construction of discrete normal flux, and the approximation of convection flux is based on the second‐order upwind method with proper slope limiter. Our scheme is locally conservative and has only cell‐centered unknowns. Numerical results show that our scheme can preserve discrete extremum principle and has almost second‐order accuracy. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A monotone finite volume scheme for advection–diffusion equations on distorted meshes

A new monotone finite volume method with second‐order accuracy is presented for the steady‐state advection–diffusion equation. The method uses a nonlinear approximation for both diffusive and advective fluxes that guarantee the positivity of the numerical solution. The approximation of the diffusive flux is based on nonlinear two‐point approximation, and the approximation of the advective flux is based on the second‐order upwind method with proper slope limiter. The second‐order convergence rate for concentration and the monotonicity of the nonlinear finite volume method are verified with numerical experiments. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient construction of high‐resolution TVD conservative schemes for equations with source terms: application to shallow water flows

High‐resolution total variation diminishing (TVD) schemes are widely used for the numerical approximation of hyperbolic conservation laws. Their extension to equations with source terms involving spatial derivatives is not obvious. In this work, efficient ways of constructing conservative schemes from the conservative, non‐conservative or characteristic form of the equations are described in detail. An upwind, as opposed to a pointwise, treatment of the source terms is adopted here, and a new technique is proposed in which source terms are included in the flux limiter functions to get a complete second‐order compact scheme. A new correction to fix the entropy problem is also presented and a robust treatment of the boundary conditions according to the discretization used is stated. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Slope limiting for discontinuous Galerkin approximations with a possibly non‐orthogonal Taylor basis

The use of high‐order polynomials in discontinuous Galerkin (DG) approximations to convection‐dominated transport problems tends to cause a violation of the maximum principle in regions where the derivatives of the solution are large. In this paper, we express the DG solution in terms of Taylor basis functions associated with the cell average and derivatives at the center of the cell. To control the (derivatives of the) discontinuous solution, the values at the vertices of each element are required to be bounded by the means. This constraint is enforced using a hierarchical vertex‐based slope limiter to constrain the coefficients of the Taylor polynomial in a conservative manner starting with the highest‐order terms. The loss of accuracy at smooth extrema is avoided by taking the maximum of the correction factors for derivatives of order p and higher. No free parameters, oscillation detectors, or troubled cell markers are involved. In the case of a non‐orthogonal Taylor basis, the same limiter is applied to the vector of discretized time derivatives before the multiplication by the off‐diagonal part of the consistent mass matrix. This strategy leads to a remarkable gain of accuracy, especially in the case of simplex meshes. A numerical study is performed for a 2D convection equation discretized with linear and quadratic finite elements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit schemes with large time step for non‐linear equations: application to river flow hydraulics

In this work, first‐order upwind implicit schemes are considered. The traditional tridiagonal scheme is rewritten as a sum of two bidiagonal schemes in order to produce a simpler method better suited for unsteady transcritical flows. On the other hand, the origin of the instabilities associated to the use of upwind implicit methods for shock propagations is identified and a new stability condition for non‐linear problems is proposed. This modification produces a robust, simple and accurate upwind semi‐explicit scheme suitable for discontinuous flows with high Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) numbers. The discretization at the boundaries is based on the condition of global mass conservation thus enabling a fully conservative solution for all kind of boundary conditions. The performance of the proposed technique will be shown in the solution of the inviscid Burgers' equation, in an ideal dambreak test case, in some steady open channel flow test cases with analytical solution and in a realistic flood routing problem, where stable and accurate solutions will be presented using CFL values up to 100. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discretization of transport equations on 2D Cartesian unstructured grids using data from remote cells for the convection terms

This paper presents a new finite volume discretization methodology for the solution of transport equations on locally refined or unstructured Cartesian meshes. The implementation of the cell‐face values of the dependent variables enables the employment of data from remote cells and thus the use of higher‐order differencing schemes. It also results in simple and flux‐conservative multiple‐scale stencils for the discretization of the governing equations. The latter are finally cast into a generalized form that does not depend on the local mesh structure. The performance of the numerical model is demonstrated on some classical 2D problems using various gridding techniques and a bounded second‐order upwind scheme. A stable and efficient behaviour of the algorithm is observed in all test cases. The results indicate that the combination in the present model of both local grid refinement and second‐order discretization can produce substantially more accurate solutions than each of the above techniques alone, for the same computational effort. The method is also applicable to turbulent flows and can be easily extended to three‐dimensions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improved multislope MUSCL reconstruction on unstructured grids for shallow water equations

In shallow water flow and transport modeling, the monotonic upstream‐centered scheme for conservation laws (MUSCL) is widely used to extend the original Godunov scheme to second‐order accuracy. The most important step in MUSCL‐type schemes is MUSCL reconstruction, which calculate‐extrapolates the values of independent variables from the cell center to the edge. The monotonicity of the scheme is preserved with the help of slope limiters that prevent the occurrence of new extrema during reconstruction. On structured grids, the calculation of the slope is straightforward and usually based on a 2‐point stencil that uses the cell centers of the neighbor cell and the so‐called far‐neighbor cell of the edge under consideration. On unstructured grids, the correct choice for the upwind slope becomes nontrivial. In this work, 2 novel total variation diminishing schemes are developed based on different techniques for calculating the upwind slope and the downwind slope. An additional treatment that stabilizes the scheme is discussed. The proposed techniques are compared to 2 existing MUSCL reconstruction techniques, and a detailed discussion of the results is given. It is shown that the proposed MUSCL reconstruction schemes obtain more accurate results with less numerical diffusion and higher efficiency.     

Fourier analysis of a class of upwind schemes in shallow water systems for gravity and Rossby waves

A Fourier analysis has been performed for a class of upwind finite volume schemes, including the study of phase speed, group velocity, damping and dispersion. In the first part, pure gravity waves are investigated. As expected, most upwind schemes lead to a significant damping, but they exhibit a better phase behavior than most centered schemes. In the second part, the Coriolis parameter is considered and the Rossby modes are studied. In this case, all selected upwind schemes lead to a severe damping. The numerical results are also compared with those obtained by using a slope limiter approach. It is concluded that most upwind schemes with or without slope limiters present poor results for an accurate calculation of the Rossby modes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A robust low‐dissipation AUSM‐family scheme for numerical shock stability on unstructured grids

The simple low‐dissipation advection upwind splitting method (SLAU) scheme is a parameter‐free, low‐dissipation upwind scheme that has been applied in a wide range of aerodynamic numerical simulations. In spite of its successful applications, the SLAU scheme could be showing shock instabilities on unstructured grids, as many other contact resolved upwind schemes. Therefore, a hybrid upwind flux scheme is devised for improving the shock stability of SLAU scheme, without compromising on accuracy and low Mach number performance. Numerical flux function of the hybrid scheme is written in a general form, in which only the scalar dissipation term is different from that of the SLAU scheme. The hybrid dissipation term is defined by using a differentiable multidimensional‐shock‐detection pressure weight function, and the dissipation term of SLAU scheme is combined with that of the Van Leer scheme. Furthermore, the hybrid dissipation term is only applied for the solution of momentum fluxes in numerical flux function. Based on the numerical test results, the hybrid scheme is deemed to be a successful improvement on the shock stability of SLAU scheme, without compromising on the efficiency and accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High resolution Godunov‐type schemes with small stencils

Higher‐order Godunov‐type schemes have to cope with the following two problems: (i) the increase in the size of the stencil that make the scheme computationally expensive, and (ii) the monotony‐preserving treatments (limiters) that must be implemented to avoid oscillations, leading to strong damping of the solution, in particular linear waves (e.g. acoustic waves). When too compressive, limiting procedures may also trigger the instability of oscillatory numerical solutions (e.g. in advection–dispersion phenomena) via the artificial amplification of the shorter modes. The present paper proposes a new approach to carry out the reconstruction. In this approach, the values of the flow variable at the edges of the computational cells are obtained directly from the reconstruction within these cells. This method is applied to the MUSCL and DPM schemes for the solution of the linear advection equation. The modified DPM scheme can capture contact discontinuities within one computational cell, even after millions of time steps at Courant numbers ranging from 1 to values as low as 10^‐4. Linear waves are subject to negligible damping. Application of the method to the DPM for one‐dimensional advection–dispersion problems shows that the numerical instability of oscillatory solutions caused by the over compressive, original DPM limiter is eliminated. One‐ and two‐dimensional shallow water simulations show an improvement over classical methods, in particular for two‐dimensional problems with strongly distorted meshes. The quality of the computational solution in the two‐dimensional case remains acceptable even for mesh aspect ratios Δx/Δy as large as 10. The method can be extend to the discretization of higher‐order PDEs, allowing third‐order space derivatives to be discretized using only two cells in space. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving simple explicit methods for unsteady open channel and river flow

A rigorous study of the explicit Lax–Friedrichs scheme for its application to one‐dimensional shallow water flows is presented. The deficiencies of this method are identified and the way to overcome them are presented. It is compared to the explicit first order upwind scheme and to the explicit second order Lax–Wendroff scheme by means of the simulation of several test cases with exact solution. All three schemes in their best balanced version are applied to the simulation of a real river flood wave leading to very satisfactory results. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of source terms on stability,accuracy and conservation in two‐dimensional shallow flow simulation using triangular finite volumes

The two‐dimensional shallow water model is a hyperbolic system of equations considered well suited to simulate unsteady phenomena related to some surface wave propagation. The development of numerical schemes to correctly solve that system of equations finds naturally an initial step in two‐dimensional scalar equation, homogeneous or with source terms. We shall first provide a complete formulation of the second‐order finite volume scheme for this equation, paying special attention to the reduction of the method to first order as a particular case. The explicit first and second order in space upwind finite volume schemes are analysed to provide an understanding of the stability constraints, making emphasis in the numerical conservation and in the preservation of the positivity property of the solution when necessary in the presence of source terms. The time step requirements for stability are defined at the cell edges, related with the traditional Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive multilevel wavelet framework for scale‐selective WENO reconstruction schemes

We put forth a dynamic computing framework for scale‐selective adaptation of weighted essential nonoscillatory (WENO) schemes for the simulation of hyperbolic conservation laws exhibiting strong discontinuities. A multilevel wavelet‐based multiresolution procedure, embedded in a conservative finite volume formulation, is used for a twofold purpose. (i) a dynamic grid adaptation of the solution field for redistributing grid points optimally (in some sense) according to the underlying flow structures, and (ii) a dynamic minimization of the in built artificial dissipation of WENO schemes. Taking advantage of the structure detection properties of this multiresolution algorithm, the nonlinear weights of the conventional WENO implementation are selectively modified to ensure lower dissipation in smoother areas. This modification is implemented through a linear transition from the fifth‐order upwind stencil at the coarsest regions of the adaptive grid to a fully nonlinear fifth‐order WENO scheme at areas of high irregularity. Therefore, our computing algorithm consists of a dynamic grid adaptation strategy, a scale‐selective state reconstruction, a conservative flux calculation, and a total variation diminishing Runge‐Kutta scheme for time advancement. Results are presented for canonical examples drawn from the inviscid Burgers, shallow water, Euler, and magnetohydrodynamic equations. Our findings represent a novel direction for providing a scale‐selective dissipation process without a compromise on shock capturing behavior for conservation laws, which would be a strong contender for dynamic implicit large eddy simulation approaches.     

Augmented upwind numerical schemes for the groundwater transport advection‐dispersion equation with local operators

When solute transport is advection‐dominated, the advection‐dispersion equation approximates to a hyperbolic‐type partial differential equation, and finite difference and finite element numerical approximation methods become prone to artificial oscillations. The upwind scheme serves to correct these responses to produce a more realistic solution. The upwind scheme is reviewed and then applied to the advection‐dispersion equation with local operators for the first‐order upwinding numerical approximation scheme. The traditional explicit and implicit schemes, as well as the Crank‐Nicolson scheme, are developed and analyzed for numerical stability to form a comparison base. Two new numerical approximation schemes are then proposed, namely, upwind–Crank‐Nicolson scheme, where only for the advection term is applied, and weighted upwind‐downwind scheme. These newly developed schemes are analyzed for numerical stability and compared to the traditional schemes. It was found that an upwind–Crank‐Nicolson scheme is appropriate if the Crank‐Nicolson scheme is only applied to the advection term of the advection‐dispersion equation. Furthermore, the proposed explicit weighted upwind‐downwind finite difference numerical scheme is an improvement on the traditional explicit first‐order upwind scheme, whereas the implicit weighted first‐order upwind‐downwind finite difference numerical scheme is stable under all assumptions when the appropriate weighting factor (θ) is assigned.     

Compact high‐resolution algorithms for time‐dependent advection on unstructured grids

A technique for constructing monotone, high resolution, multi‐dimensional upwind fluctuation distribution schemes for the scalar advection equation is presented. The method combines the second‐order Lax–Wendroff scheme with the upwind positive streamwise invariant (PSI) scheme via a fluctuation redistribution step, which ensures monotonicity (and which is a generalization of the flux‐corrected transport approach for fluctuation distribution schemes). Furthermore, the concept of a distribution point is introduced, which, when related to the equivalent equation for the scheme, leads to a ‘preferred direction’ for the limiting procedure, and hence to a new distribution of the fluctuation, which retains second‐order accuracy from the Lax–Wendroff scheme, even when the solution contains turning points. Experimental comparisons show that the new method compares favourably in terms of speed, accuracy and robustness with other, similar, techniques. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reducing numerical diffusion in interfacial gravity wave simulations

We demonstrate how the background potential energy is an excellent measure of the effective numerical diffusion or antidiffusion of an advection scheme by applying several advection schemes to a standing interfacial gravity wave. All existing advection schemes do not maintain the background potential energy because they are either diffusive, antidiffusive, or oscillatory. By taking advantage of the compressive nature of some schemes, which causes a decrease in the background potential energy, and the diffusive nature of others, which causes an increase in the background potential energy, we develop two background potential energy preserving advection schemes that are well‐suited to study interfacial gravity waves at a density interface between two miscible fluids in closed domains such as lakes. The schemes employ total variation diminishing limiters and universal limiters in which the limiter is a function of both the upwind and local gradients as well as the background potential energy. The effectiveness of the schemes is validated by computing a sloshing interfacial gravity wave with a nonstaggered‐grid Boussinesq solver, in which QUICK is employed for momentum and the pressure correction method is used, which is second‐order accurate in time. For scalar advection, the present background potential energy preserving schemes are employed and compared to other TVD and non‐TVD schemes, and we demonstrate that the schemes can control the change in the background potential energy due to numerical effects. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.