A Galerkin spectral method based on helical‐wave decomposition for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

This paper presents a global Galerkin spectral method for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in three‐dimensional bounded domains. The method is based on helical‐wave decomposition (HWD), which uses the vector eigenfunctions of the curl operator as orthogonal basis functions. We shall first review the general theory of HWD in an arbitrary simply connected domain, along with some new developments. We then employ the HWD to construct a Galerkin spectral method. The current method innovates the existing HWD‐based spectral method by (a) adding a series of auxiliary fields to the HWD of the velocity field to fulfill the no‐slip boundary condition and to settle the convergence problem of the HWD of the curl fields, and (b) providing a pseudo‐spectral method that utilizes a fast spherical harmonic transform algorithm and Gaussian quadrature to calculate the nonlinear term in the Navier–Stokes equations. The auxiliary fields are uniquely determined by solving the Stokes and Stokes‐like equations under adequate boundary conditions. The implementation of the method under the spherical geometry is presented in detail. Several numerical examples are provided to validate the proposed method. The method can be easily extended to other domains once the helical‐wave bases, which depend only on the geometry of the domains, are available. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incompressible Roe‐like scheme for turbulent flows

In the current study, numerical investigation of incompressible turbulent flow is presented. By the artificial compressibility method, momentum and continuity equations are coupled. Considering Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations, the Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model, which has accurate results in two‐dimensional problems, is used to calculate Reynolds stresses. For convective fluxes a Roe‐like scheme is proposed for the steady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations. Also, Jameson averaging method was implemented. In comparison, the proposed characteristics‐based upwind incompressible turbulent Roe‐like scheme, demonstrated very accurate results, high stability, and fast convergence. The fifth‐order Runge–Kutta scheme is used for time discretization. The local time stepping and implicit residual smoothing were applied as the convergence acceleration techniques. Suitable boundary conditions have been implemented considering flow behavior. The problem has been studied at high Reynolds numbers for cross flow around the horizontal circular cylinder and NACA0012 hydrofoil. Results were compared with those of others and a good agreement has been observed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Approximation of a Solution to the Euler Equation by Solutions of the Navier–Stokes Equation

We show that a smooth solution u ⁰ of the Euler boundary value problem on a time interval (0, T ₀) can be approximated by a family of solutions of the Navier–Stokes problem in a topology of weak or strong solutions on the same time interval (0, T ₀). The solutions of the Navier–Stokes problem satisfy Navier’s boundary condition, which must be “naturally inhomogeneous” if we deal with the strong solutions. We provide information on the rate of convergence of the solutions of the Navier–Stokes problem to the solution of the Euler problem for ν → 0. We also discuss possibilities when Navier’s boundary condition becomes homogeneous.     

Least‐squares meshfree method for incompressible Navier–Stokes problems

A least‐squares meshfree method based on the first‐order velocity–pressure–vorticity formulation for two‐dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes problem is presented. The convective term is linearized by successive substitution or Newton's method. The discretization of all governing equations is implemented by the least‐squares method. Equal‐order moving least‐squares approximation is employed with Gauss quadrature in the background cells. The boundary conditions are enforced by the penalty method. The matrix‐free element‐by‐element Jacobi preconditioned conjugate method is applied to solve the discretized linear systems. Cavity flow for steady Navier–Stokes problem and the flow over a square obstacle for time‐dependent Navier–Stokes problem are investigated for the presented least‐squares meshfree method. The effects of inaccurate integration on the accuracy of the solution are investigated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit application of non‐reflective boundary conditions for Navier–Stokes equations in generalized coordinates

The non‐reflective boundary conditions (NRBC) for Navier–Stokes equations originally suggested by Poinsot and Lele (J. Comput. Phys. 1992; 101 :104–129) in Cartesian coordinates are extended to generalized coordinates. The characteristic form Navier–Stokes equations in conservative variables are given. In this characteristic‐based method, the NRBC is implicitly coupled with the Navier–Stokes flow solver and are solved simultaneously with the flow solver. The calculations are conducted for a subsonic vortex propagating flow and the steady and unsteady transonic inlet‐diffuser flows. The results indicate that the present method is accurate and robust, and the NRBC are essential for unsteady flow calculations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A consistent splitting scheme for unsteady incompressible viscous flows I. Dirichlet boundary condition and applications

A well‐recognized approach for handling the incompressibility constraint by operating directly on the discretized Navier–Stokes equations is used to obtain the decoupling of the pressure from the velocity field. By following the current developments by Guermond and Shen, the possibilities of obtaining accurate pressure and reducing boundary‐layer effect for the pressure are analysed. The present study mainly reports the numerical solutions of an unsteady Navier–Stokes problem based on the so‐called consistent splitting scheme (J. Comput. Phys. 2003; 192 :262–276). At the same time the Dirichlet boundary value conditions are considered. The accuracy of the method is carefully examined against the exact solution for an unsteady flow physics problem in a simply connected domain. The effectiveness is illustrated viz. several computations of 2D double lid‐driven cavity problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empirical slip and viscosity model performance for microscale gas flow

For the simple geometries of Couette and Poiseuille flows, the velocity profile maintains a similar shape from continuum to free molecular flow. Therefore, modifications to the fluid viscosity and slip boundary conditions can improve the continuum based Navier–Stokes solution in the non‐continuum non‐equilibrium regime. In this investigation, the optimal modifications are found by a linear least‐squares fit of the Navier–Stokes solution to the non‐equilibrium solution obtained using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. Models are then constructed for the Knudsen number dependence of the viscosity correction and the slip model from a database of DSMC solutions for Couette and Poiseuille flows of argon and nitrogen gas, with Knudsen numbers ranging from 0.01 to 10. Finally, the accuracy of the models is measured for non‐equilibrium cases both in and outside the DSMC database. Flows outside the database include: combined Couette and Poiseuille flow, partial wall accommodation, helium gas, and non‐zero convective acceleration. The models reproduce the velocity profiles in the DSMC database within an L₂ error norm of 3% for Couette flows and 7% for Poiseuille flows. However, the errors in the model predictions outside the database are up to five times larger. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time‐dependent flow across a step: the slip with friction boundary condition

The paper studies numerically the slip with friction boundary condition in the time‐dependent incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Numerical tests on two‐ and three‐dimensional channel flows across a step using this boundary condition on the bottom wall are performed. The influence of the friction parameter on the flow field is studied and the results are explained according to the physics of the flow. Due to the stretching and tilting of vortices, the three‐dimensional results differ in many respects from the two‐dimensional ones. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled Navier–Stokes—Molecular dynamics simulations using a multi‐physics flow simulation framework

Simulation of nano‐scale channel flows using a coupled Navier–Stokes/Molecular Dynamics (MD) method is presented. The flow cases serve as examples of the application of a multi‐physics computational framework put forward in this work. The framework employs a set of (partially) overlapping sub‐domains in which different levels of physical modelling are used to describe the flow. This way, numerical simulations based on the Navier–Stokes equations can be extended to flows in which the continuum and/or Newtonian flow assumptions break down in regions of the domain, by locally increasing the level of detail in the model. Then, the use of multiple levels of physical modelling can reduce the overall computational cost for a given level of fidelity. The present work describes the structure of a parallel computational framework for such simulations, including details of a Navier–Stokes/MD coupling, the convergence behaviour of coupled simulations as well as the parallel implementation. For the cases considered here, micro‐scale MD problems are constructed to provide viscous stresses for the Navier–Stokes equations. The first problem is the planar Poiseuille flow, for which the viscous fluxes on each cell face in the finite‐volume discretization are evaluated using MD. The second example deals with fully developed three‐dimensional channel flow, with molecular level modelling of the shear stresses in a group of cells in the domain corners. An important aspect in using shear stresses evaluated with MD in Navier–Stokes simulations is the scatter in the data due to the sampling of a finite ensemble over a limited interval. In the coupled simulations, this prevents the convergence of the system in terms of the reduction of the norm of the residual vector of the finite‐volume discretization of the macro‐domain. Solutions to this problem are discussed in the present work, along with an analysis of the effect of number of realizations and sample duration. The averaging of the apparent viscosity for each cell face, i.e. the ratio of the shear stress predicted from MD and the imposed velocity gradient, over a number of macro‐scale time steps is shown to be a simple but effective method to reach a good level of convergence of the coupled system. Finally, the parallel efficiency of the developed method is demonstrated. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On coupling the Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations with two‐equation turbulence model equations

Two methods for coupling the Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations with the q–ω turbulence model equations on structured grid systems have been studied; namely a loosely coupled method and a strongly coupled method. The loosely coupled method first solves the Navier–Stokes equations with the turbulent viscosity fixed. In a subsequent step, the turbulence model equations are solved with all flow quantities fixed. On the other hand, the strongly coupled method solves the Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations and the turbulence model equations simultaneously. In this paper, numerical stabilities of both methods in conjunction with the approximated factorization‐alternative direction implicit method are analysed. The effect of the turbulent kinetic energy terms in the governing equations on the convergence characteristics is also studied. The performance of the two methods is compared for several two‐ and three‐dimensional problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow simulation on moving boundary‐fitted grids and application to fluid–structure interaction problems

We present a method for the parallel numerical simulation of transient three‐dimensional fluid–structure interaction problems. Here, we consider the interaction of incompressible flow in the fluid domain and linear elastic deformation in the solid domain. The coupled problem is tackled by an approach based on the classical alternating Schwarz method with non‐overlapping subdomains, the subproblems are solved alternatingly and the coupling conditions are realized via the exchange of boundary conditions. The elasticity problem is solved by a standard linear finite element method. A main issue is that the flow solver has to be able to handle time‐dependent domains. To this end, we present a technique to solve the incompressible Navier–Stokes equation in three‐dimensional domains with moving boundaries. This numerical method is a generalization of a finite volume discretization using curvilinear coordinates to time‐dependent coordinate transformations. It corresponds to a discretization of the arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations. Here the grid velocity is treated in such a way that the so‐called Geometric Conservation Law is implicitly satisfied. Altogether, our approach results in a scheme which is an extension of the well‐known MAC‐method to a staggered mesh in moving boundary‐fitted coordinates which uses grid‐dependent velocity components as the primary variables. To validate our method, we present some numerical results which show that second‐order convergence in space is obtained on moving grids. Finally, we give the results of a fully coupled fluid–structure interaction problem. It turns out that already a simple explicit coupling with one iteration of the Schwarz method, i.e. one solution of the fluid problem and one solution of the elasticity problem per time step, yields a convergent, simple, yet efficient overall method for fluid–structure interaction problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid vortex method for the simulation of three‐dimensional flows

This paper presents an integral vorticity method for solving three‐dimensional Navier–Stokes equations. A finite volume scheme is implemented to solve the vorticity transport equation, which is discretized on a structured hexahedral mesh. A vortex sheet algorithm is used to enforce the no‐slip boundary condition through a vorticity flux at the boundary. The Biot–Savart integral is evaluated to compute the velocity field, in conjunction with a fast algorithm based on multipole expansion. This method is applied to the simulation of uniform flow past a sphere. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On 3D Lagrangian Navier–Stokes α Model with a Class of Vorticity-Slip Boundary Conditions

This paper concerns the 3-dimensional Lagrangian Navier–Stokes α model and the limiting Navier–Stokes system on smooth bounded domains with a class of vorticity-slip boundary conditions and the Navier-slip boundary conditions. It establishes the spectrum properties and regularity estimates of the associated Stokes operators, the local well-posedness of the strong solution and global existence of weak solutions for initial boundary value problems for such systems. Furthermore, the vanishing α limit to a weak solution of the corresponding initial-boundary value problem of the Navier–Stokes system is proved and a rate of convergence is shown for the strong solution.     

Analysis of iterative methods for the viscous/inviscid coupled problem via a spectral element approximation

Based on a new global variational formulation, a spectral element approximation of the incompressible Navier–Stokes/Euler coupled problem gives rise to a global discrete saddle problem. The classical Uzawa algorithm decouples the original saddle problem into two positive definite symmetric systems. Iterative solutions of such systems are feasible and attractive for large problems. It is shown that, provided an appropriate pre‐conditioner is chosen for the pressure system, the nested conjugate gradient methods can be applied to obtain rapid convergence rates. Detailed numerical examples are given to prove the quality of the pre‐conditioner. Thanks to the rapid iterative convergence, the global Uzawa algorithm takes advantage of this as compared with the classical iteration by sub‐domain procedures. Furthermore, a generalization of the pre‐conditioned iterative algorithm to flow simulation is carried out. Comparisons of computational complexity between the Navier–Stokes/Euler coupled solution and the full Navier–Stokes solution are made. It is shown that the gain obtained by using the Navier–Stokes/Euler coupled solution is generally considerable. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Acceleration on stretched meshes with line-implicit LU-SGS in parallel implementation

The implicit lower–upper symmetric Gauss–Seidel (LU-SGS) solver is combined with the line-implicit technique to improve convergence on the very anisotropic grids necessary for resolving the boundary layers. The computational fluid dynamics code used is Edge, a Navier–Stokes flow solver for unstructured grids based on a dual grid and edge-based formulation. Multigrid acceleration is applied with the intention to accelerate the convergence to steady state. LU-SGS works in parallel and gives better linear scaling with respect to the number of processors, than the explicit scheme. The ordering techniques investigated have shown that node numbering does influence the convergence and that the orderings from Delaunay and advancing front generation were among the best tested. 2D Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes computations have clearly shown the strong efficiency of our novel approach line-implicit LU-SGS which is four times faster than implicit LU-SGS and line-implicit Runge–Kutta. Implicit LU-SGS for Euler and line-implicit LU-SGS for Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes are at least twice faster than explicit and line-implicit Runge–Kutta, respectively, for 2D and 3D cases. For 3D Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes, multigrid did not accelerate the convergence and therefore may not be needed.     

Analysis of preconditioned iterative solvers for incompressible flow problems

Solving efficiently the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations is a major challenge, especially in the three‐dimensional case. The approach investigated by Elman et al. (Finite Elements and Fast Iterative Solvers. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2005) consists in applying a preconditioned GMRES method to the linearized problem at each iteration of a nonlinear scheme. The preconditioner is built as an approximation of an ideal block‐preconditioner that guarantees convergence in 2 or 3 iterations. In this paper, we investigate the numerical behavior for the three‐dimensional lid‐driven cavity problem with wedge elements; the ultimate motivation of this analysis is indeed the development of a preconditioned Krylov solver for stratified oceanic flows which can be efficiently tackled using such meshes. Numerical results for steady‐state solutions of both the Stokes and the Navier–Stokes problems are presented. Theoretical bounds on the spectrum and the rate of convergence appear to be in agreement with the numerical experiments. Sensitivity analysis on different aspects of the structure of the preconditioner and the block decomposition strategies are also discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled lubrication and Stokes flow finite elements

A method is developed for performing a local reduction of the governing physics for fluid problems with domains that contain a combination of narrow and non‐narrow regions, and the computational accuracy and performance of the method are measured. In the narrow regions of the domain, where the fluid is assumed to have no inertia and the domain height and curvature are assumed small, lubrication, or Reynolds, theory is used locally to reduce the two‐dimensional Navier–Stokes equations to the one‐dimensional Reynolds equation while retaining a high degree of accuracy in the overall solution. The Reynolds equation is coupled to the governing momentum and mass equations of the non‐narrow region with boundary conditions on the mass and momentum flux. The localized reduction technique, termed ‘stitching,’ is demonstrated on Stokes flow for various geometries of the hydrodynamic journal bearing—a non‐trivial test problem for which a known analytical solution is available. The computational advantage of the coupled Stokes–Reynolds method is illustrated on an industrially applicable fully‐flooded deformable‐roll coating example. The examples in this paper are limited to two‐dimensional Stokes flow, but extension to three‐dimensional and Navier–Stokes flow is possible. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Control of Navier–Stokes equations by means of mode reduction

In a previous work (Park HM, Lee MW. An efficient method of solving the Navier–Stokes equation for the flow control. International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering 1998; 41 : 1131–1151), the authors proposed an efficient method of solving the Navier–Stokes equations by reducing their number of modes. Employing the empirical eigenfunctions of the Karhunen–Loève decomposition as basis functions of a Galerkin procedure, one can a priori limit the function space considered to the smallest linear sub‐space that is sufficient to describe the observed phenomena, and consequently, reduce the Navier–Stokes equations defined on a complicated geometry to a set of ordinary differential equations with a minimum degree of freedom. In the present work, we apply this technique, termed the Karhunen–Loève Galerkin procedure, to a pointwise control problem of Navier–Stokes equations. The Karhunen–Loève Galerkin procedure is found to be much more efficient than the traditional method, such as finite difference method in obtaining optimal control profiles when the minimization of the objective function has been done by using a conjugate gradient method.     

Finite element modified method of characteristics for the Navier–Stokes equations

An algorithm based on the finite element modified method of characteristics (FEMMC) is presented to solve convection–diffusion, Burgers and unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for laminar flow. Solutions for these progressively more involved problems are presented so as to give numerical evidence for the robustness, good error characteristics and accuracy of our method. To solve the Navier–Stokes equations, an approach that can be conceived as a fractional step method is used. The innovative first stage of our method is a backward search and interpolation at the foot of the characteristics, which we identify as the convective step. In this particular work, this step is followed by a conjugate gradient solution of the remaining Stokes problem. Numerical results are presented for:

• a Convection–diffusion equation. Gaussian hill in a uniform rotating field.
• b Burgers equations with viscosity.
• c Navier–Stokes solution of lid‐driven cavity flow at relatively high Reynolds numbers.
• d Navier–Stokes solution of flow around a circular cylinder at Re=100.

Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled Navier–Stokes/molecular dynamics simulations in nonperiodic domains based on particle forcing

This paper focuses on coupling methods for hybrid Navier–Stokes/molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The computational domain is split in a continuum flow region, where a finite‐volume discretisation of the Navier–Stokes equations is used, and one or more particle domains, where molecular level modelling of the flow is employed. The domains are defined with a partial overlap, in which the flow states are coupled through an exchange of the velocity components. For the steady flows considered, an under‐relaxed Newton iteration method is used to drive the coupled system to convergence. The main focus of the present work is on methods to impose nonperiodic boundary conditions on the particle domain(s). A particle forcing is applied in the direction normal to the particle domain boundary to impose the boundary normal velocity component. A novel aspect of the present work is the extension of this method to more general nonplanar particle domain boundaries. The main contribution of the paper is the development of a particle forcing method in the direction tangential to the domain boundary, which is based on the equivalent continuum‐flow boundary shear stresses along with an iterative forcing strength adjustment based on the extrapolated particle boundary velocity. Furthermore, an adaptation scheme is presented, which uses the finite‐volume flux residuals of the particle bin averaged velocity field as a truncation criterion for the iterative force‐update scheme. It is demonstrated that by comparing the residual reduction for the momentum equation in the nonhomogeneous directions during the molecular dynamics simulations with that for a homogeneous direction, the forcing iteration at which the statistical noise in the velocity field dominates the uncertainty in the forcing strength can be determined. At this point the iteration can be truncated. It is shown that with adaptive schemes of this type, the total number of MD evaluations required in a coupled Navier–Stokes/MD simulation can be reduced relative to a hybrid scheme with a fixed number of forcing‐strength updates. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.