Multigrid method and fourth-order compact difference discretization scheme with unequal meshsizes for 3D poisson equation

A fourth-order compact difference discretization scheme with unequal meshsizes in different coordinate directions is employed to solve a three-dimensional (3D) Poisson equation on a cubic domain. Two multgrid methods are developed to solve the resulting sparse linear systems. One is to use the full-coarsening multigrid method with plane Gauss–Seidel relaxation, which uses line Gauss–Seidel relaxation to compute each planewise solution. The other is to construct a partial semi-coarsening multigrid method with the traditional point or plane Gauss–Seidel relaxations. Numerical experiments are conducted to test the computed accuracy of the fourth-order compact difference scheme and the computational efficiency of the multigrid methods with the fourth-order compact difference scheme.     

A comment on Kerr–CFT and Wald entropy

We point out that the entropies of black holes in general diffeomorphism invariant theories, computed using the Kerr–CFT correspondence and the Wald formula (as implemented in the entropy function formalism), need not always agree. A simple way to illustrate this is to consider Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet gravity in four dimensions, where the Gauss–Bonnet term is topological. This means that the central charge of Kerr–CFT computed in the Barnich–Brandt–Compere formalism remains the same as in Einstein gravity, while the entropy computed using the entropy function gives a universal correction proportional to the Gauss–Bonnet coupling. We argue that at least in this example, the Kerr–CFT result is the physically reasonable one. The resolution to this discrepancy might lie in a better understanding of boundary terms.     

Toward textbook multigrid efficiency for fully implicit resistive magnetohydrodynamics

Multigrid methods can solve some classes of elliptic and parabolic equations to accuracy below the truncation error with a work-cost equivalent to a few residual calculations – so-called “textbook” multigrid efficiency. We investigate methods to solve the system of equations that arise in time dependent magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations with textbook multigrid efficiency. We apply multigrid techniques such as geometric interpolation, full approximate storage, Gauss–Seidel smoothers, and defect correction for fully implicit, nonlinear, second-order finite volume discretizations of MHD. We apply these methods to a standard resistive MHD benchmark problem, the GEM reconnection problem, and add a strong magnetic guide field, which is a critical characteristic of magnetically confined fusion plasmas. We show that our multigrid methods can achieve near textbook efficiency on fully implicit resistive MHD simulations.     

Rational Legendre pseudospectral approach for solving nonlinear differential equations of Lane–Emden type

Lane–Emden equation is a nonlinear singular equation in the astrophysics that corresponds to the polytropic models. In this paper, a pseudospectral technique is proposed to solve the Lane–Emden type equations on a semi-infinite domain. The method is based on rational Legendre functions and Gauss–Radau integration. The method reduces solving the nonlinear ordinary differential equation to solve a system of nonlinear algebraic equations. The comparison of the results with the other numerical methods shows the efficiency and accuracy of this method.     

A monotone finite volume method for advection–diffusion equations on unstructured polygonal meshes

We present a new second-order accurate monotone finite volume (FV) method for the steady-state advection–diffusion equation. The method uses a nonlinear approximation for both diffusive and advective fluxes and guarantees solution non-negativity. The interpolation-free approximation of the diffusive flux uses the nonlinear two-point stencil proposed in Lipnikov [23]. Approximation of the advective flux is based on the second-order upwind method with a specially designed minimal nonlinear correction. The second-order convergence rate and monotonicity are verified with numerical experiments.     

An approximate block Newton method for coupled iterations of nonlinear solvers: Theory and conjugate heat transfer applications

A new, approximate block Newton (ABN) method is derived and tested for the coupled solution of nonlinear models, each of which is treated as a modular, black box. Such an approach is motivated by a desire to maintain software flexibility without sacrificing solution efficiency or robustness. Though block Newton methods of similar type have been proposed and studied, we present a unique derivation and use it to sort out some of the more confusing points in the literature. In particular, we show that our ABN method behaves like a Newton iteration preconditioned by an inexact Newton solver derived from subproblem Jacobians. The method is demonstrated on several conjugate heat transfer problems modeled after melt crystal growth processes. These problems are represented by partitioned spatial regions, each modeled by independent heat transfer codes and linked by temperature and flux matching conditions at the boundaries common to the partitions. Whereas a typical block Gauss–Seidel iteration fails about half the time for the model problem, quadratic convergence is achieved by the ABN method under all conditions studied here. Additional performance advantages over existing methods are demonstrated and discussed.     

Two-Level Hierarchical FEM Method for Modeling Passive Microwave Devices

In recent years multigrid methods have been proven to be very efficient for solving large systems of linear equations resulting from the discretization of positive definite differential equations by either the finite difference method or theh-version of the finite element method. In this paper an iterative method of the multiple level type is proposed for solving systems of algebraic equations which arise from thep-version of the finite element analysis applied to indefinite problems. A two-levelV-cycle algorithm has been implemented and studied with a Gauss–Seidel iterative scheme used as a smoother. The convergence of the method has been investigated, and numerical results for a number of numerical examples are presented.     

A multi-block ADI finite-volume method for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in complex geometries

An efficient second-order accurate finite-volume method is developed for a solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations on complex multi-block structured curvilinear grids. Unlike in the finite-volume or finite-difference-based alternating-direction-implicit (ADI) methods, where factorization of the coordinate transformed governing equations is performed along generalized coordinate directions, in the proposed method, the discretized Cartesian form Navier–Stokes equations are factored along curvilinear grid lines. The new ADI finite-volume method is also extended for simulations on multi-block structured curvilinear grids with which complex geometries can be efficiently resolved. The numerical method is first developed for an unsteady convection–diffusion equation, then is extended for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. The order of accuracy and stability characteristics of the present method are analyzed in simulations of an unsteady convection–diffusion problem, decaying vortices, flow in a lid-driven cavity, flow over a circular cylinder, and turbulent flow through a planar channel. Numerical solutions predicted by the proposed ADI finite-volume method are found to be in good agreement with experimental and other numerical data, while the solutions are obtained at much lower computational cost than those required by other iterative methods without factorization. For a simulation on a grid with O(10⁵) cells, the computational time required by the present ADI-based method for a solution of momentum equations is found to be less than 20% of that required by a method employing a biconjugate-gradient-stabilized scheme.     

Multigrid method based on the transformation-free HOC scheme on nonuniform grids for 2D convection diffusion problems

In this paper, a multigrid method based on the high order compact (HOC) difference scheme on nonuniform grids, which has been proposed by Kalita et al. [J.C. Kalita, A.K. Dass, D.C. Dalal, A transformation-free HOC scheme for steady convection–diffusion on non-uniform grids, Int. J. Numer. Methods Fluids 44 (2004) 33–53], is proposed to solve the two-dimensional (2D) convection diffusion equation. The HOC scheme is not involved in any grid transformation to map the nonuniform grids to uniform grids, consequently, the multigrid method is brand-new for solving the discrete system arising from the difference equation on nonuniform grids. The corresponding multigrid projection and interpolation operators are constructed by the area ratio. Some boundary layer and local singularity problems are used to demonstrate the superiority of the present method. Numerical results show that the multigrid method with the HOC scheme on nonuniform grids almost gets as equally efficient convergence rate as on uniform grids and the computed solution on nonuniform grids retains fourth order accuracy while on uniform grids just gets very poor solution for very steep boundary layer or high local singularity problems. The present method is also applied to solve the 2D incompressible Navier–Stokes equations using the stream function–vorticity formulation and the numerical solutions of the lid-driven cavity flow problem are obtained and compared with solutions available in the literature.     

An evaluation of solution algorithms and numerical approximation methods for modeling an ion exchange process

The focus of this work is on the modeling of an ion exchange process that occurs in drinking water treatment applications. The model formulation consists of a two-scale model in which a set of microscale diffusion equations representing ion exchange resin particles that vary in size and age are coupled through a boundary condition with a macroscopic ordinary differential equation (ODE), which represents the concentration of a species in a well-mixed reactor. We introduce a new age-averaged model (AAM) that averages all ion exchange particle ages for a given size particle to avoid the expensive Monte-Carlo simulation associated with previous modeling applications. We discuss two different numerical schemes to approximate both the original Monte-Carlo algorithm and the new AAM for this two-scale problem. The first scheme is based on the finite element formulation in space coupled with an existing backward difference formula-based ODE solver in time. The second scheme uses an integral equation based Krylov deferred correction (KDC) method and a fast elliptic solver (FES) for the resulting elliptic equations. Numerical results are presented to validate the new AAM algorithm, which is also shown to be more computationally efficient than the original Monte-Carlo algorithm. We also demonstrate that the higher order KDC scheme is more efficient than the traditional finite element solution approach and this advantage becomes increasingly important as the desired accuracy of the solution increases. We also discuss issues of smoothness, which affect the efficiency of the KDC–FES approach, and outline additional algorithmic changes that would further improve the efficiency of these developing methods for a wide range of applications.     

The variational iteration method for solitary patterns solutions of gBBM equation

We consider solitary patterns solutions of generalized Benjamin–Bona–Mahony equations (shortly gBBM). The variational iteration method (shortly VIM) is applied for the numerical solution subject to appropriate initial condition. The numerical solutions of our model equation are calculated in the form of convergence power series with easily computable components. The VIM performs extremely well in terms of accuracy, efficiently, simplicity, stability and reliability.     

A transition rate transformation method for solving advection–dispersion equation

Advection–dispersion equation is widely used to describe solute transport in hydrology. However, using conventional methods, e.g., finite difference method, to solve this equation may result in numerical dispersion and oscillation, especially when the advection velocity is large. This paper presents a novel transition rate transformation (TRT) method to simulate the advection–dispersion process. Advection–dispersion equation is invariant as the transition rate function is transformed under the condition that the first and second spatial moments of the transition rate are kept unchanged. According to this invariance, the TRT method constructs simple transition rate functions to solve the advection–dispersion equation. Our simulation shows that the results obtained by the TRT method agree well with analytical solutions. The freedom of the selection of transition rate functions may be very useful for the simulations of the advection–dispersion problems.     

Viscous and inviscid regularizations in a class of evolutionary partial differential equations

We investigate solution properties of a class of evolutionary partial differential equations (PDEs) with viscous and inviscid regularization. An equation in this class of PDEs can be written as an evolution equation, involving only first-order spatial derivatives, coupled with the Helmholtz equation. A recently developed two-step iterative method (P.H. Chiu, L. Lee, T.W.H. Sheu, A dispersion-relation-preserving algorithm for a nonlinear shallow-water wave equation, J. Comput. Phys. 228 (2009) 8034–8052) is employed to study this class of PDEs. The method is in principle superior for PDE’s in this class as it preserves their physical dispersive features. In particular, we focus on a Leray-type regularization (H.S. Bhat, R.C. Fetecau, A Hamiltonian regularization of the Burgers equation, J. Nonlinear Sci. 16 (2006) 615–638) of the Hopf equation proposed in alternative to the classical Burgers viscous term. We show that the regularization effects induced by the alternative model can be vastly different from those induced by Burgers viscosity depending on the smoothness of initial data in the limit of zero regularization. We validate our numerical scheme by comparison with a particle method which admits closed form solutions. Further effects of the interplay between the dispersive terms comprising the Leray-regularization are illustrated by solutions of equations in this class resulting from regularized Burgers equation by selective elimination of dispersive terms.     

A high-order gas-kinetic Navier–Stokes flow solver

The foundation for the development of modern compressible flow solver is based on the Riemann solution of the inviscid Euler equations. The high-order schemes are basically related to high-order spatial interpolation or reconstruction. In order to overcome the low-order wave interaction mechanism due to the Riemann solution, the temporal accuracy of the scheme can be improved through the Runge–Kutta method, where the dynamic deficiencies in the first-order Riemann solution is alleviated through the sub-step spatial reconstruction in the Runge–Kutta process. The close coupling between the spatial and temporal evolution in the original nonlinear governing equations seems weakened due to its spatial and temporal decoupling. Many recently developed high-order methods require a Navier–Stokes flux function under piece-wise discontinuous high-order initial reconstruction. However, the piece-wise discontinuous initial data and the hyperbolic-parabolic nature of the Navier–Stokes equations seem inconsistent mathematically, such as the divergence of the viscous and heat conducting terms due to initial discontinuity. In this paper, based on the Boltzmann equation, we are going to present a time-dependent flux function from a high-order discontinuous reconstruction. The theoretical basis for such an approach is due to the fact that the Boltzmann equation has no specific requirement on the smoothness of the initial data and the kinetic equation has the mechanism to construct a dissipative wave structure starting from an initially discontinuous flow condition on a time scale being larger than the particle collision time. The current high-order flux evaluation method is an extension of the second-order gas-kinetic BGK scheme for the Navier–Stokes equations (BGK-NS). The novelty for the easy extension from a second-order to a higher order is due to the simple particle transport and collision mechanism on the microscopic level. This paper will present a hierarchy to construct such a high-order method. The necessity to couple spatial and temporal evolution nonlinearly in the flux evaluation can be clearly observed through the numerical performance of the scheme for the viscous flow computations.     

Accelerating Airy–Gauss–Kummer localized wave packets

A general approach to generating three-dimensional nondiffracting spatiotemporal solutions of the linear Schrödinger equation with an Airy-beam time-dependence is reported. A class of accelerating optical pulses with the structure of Airy–Gauss–Kummer vortex beams is obtained. Our results demonstrate that the optical field contributions to the Airy–Gauss–Kummer accelerating optical wave packets of the cylindrical symmetry can be characterized by the radial and angular mode numbers.     

A new anisotropic mesh adaptation method based upon hierarchical a posteriori error estimates

A new anisotropic mesh adaptation strategy for finite element solution of elliptic differential equations is presented. It generates anisotropic adaptive meshes as quasi-uniform ones in some metric space, with the metric tensor being computed based on hierarchical a posteriori error estimates. A global hierarchical error estimate is employed in this study to obtain reliable directional information of the solution. Instead of solving the global error problem exactly, which is costly in general, we solve it iteratively using the symmetric Gauß–Seidel method. Numerical results show that a few GS iterations are sufficient for obtaining a reasonably good approximation to the error for use in anisotropic mesh adaptation. The new method is compared with several strategies using local error estimators or recovered Hessians. Numerical results are presented for a selection of test examples and a mathematical model for heat conduction in a thermal battery with large orthotropic jumps in the material coefficients.     

基于新型混合场积分方程的半空间三维均匀介质目标电磁散射分析

利用介质半空间格林函数,将一种混合场积分方程(JMCFIE)推广应用到有耗半空间的均匀介质的散射分析中,以减少离散矩阵方程迭代求解时所需的迭代步数,提高矩量法(MoM)对半空间介质目标散射分析的求解效率.数值算例验证了方法的准确性和有效性.     

Gauss–Bonnet term on vacuum decay

We study the effect of the Gauss–Bonnet term on vacuum decay process in the Coleman–De Luccia formalism. The Gauss–Bonnet term has an exponential coupling with the real scalar field, which appears in the low energy effective action of string theories. We calculate numerically the instanton solution, which describes the process of vacuum decay, and obtain the critical size of bubble. We find that the Gauss–Bonnet term has a nontrivial effect on the false vacuum decay, depending on the Gauss–Bonnet coefficient.     

Pore size distribution calculation from H NMR signal and N2 adsorption–desorption techniques

The pore size distribution (PSD) of nano-material MCM-41 is determined using two different approaches: N₂ adsorption–desorption and ¹H NMR signal of water confined in silica nano-pores of MCM-41. The first approach is based on the recently modified Kelvin equation [J.V. Rocha, D. Barrera, K. Sapag, Top. Catal. 54(2011) 121–134] which deals with the known underestimation in pore size distribution for the mesoporous materials such as MCM-41 by introducing a correction factor to the classical Kelvin equation. The second method employs the Gibbs–Thompson equation, using NMR, for melting point depression of liquid in confined geometries. The result shows that both approaches give similar pore size distribution to some extent, and also the NMR technique can be considered as an alternative direct method to obtain quantitative results especially for mesoporous materials. The pore diameter estimated for the nano-material used in this study was about 35 and 38 Å for the modified Kelvin and NMR methods respectively. A comparison between these methods and the classical Kelvin equation is also presented.     

Explicit and implicit finite difference schemes for fractional Cattaneo equation

In this paper, the numerical solution of fractional (non-integer)-order Cattaneo equation for describing anomalous diffusion has been investigated. Two finite difference schemes namely an explicit predictor–corrector and totally implicit schemes have been developed. In developing each scheme, a separate formulation approach for the governing equations has been considered. The explicit predictor–corrector scheme is the fractional generalization of well-known MacCormack scheme and has been called Generalized MacCormack scheme. This scheme solves two coupled low-order equations and simultaneously computes the flux term with the main variable. Fully implicit scheme however solves a single high-order undecomposed equation. For Generalized MacCormack scheme, stability analysis has been studied through Fourier method. Through a numerical test, the experimental order of convergency of both schemes has been found. Then, the domain of applicability and some numerical properties of each scheme have been discussed.