NEAR-WAKE FLOW CALCULATIONS BY AN IMPLICIT 2D NAVIER-STOKES ROE RIEMANN SOLVER

Abstract

A flux formulation using a projected 2D Roe Riemann solver on unstructured grids (R2D Solver) is introduced for solving the Navier-Stokes equations and is applied to calculations of axisymmetric laminar near-wake flows behind a spherical-conical body. The numerical framework was first developed by P. L. Roe et al, in the late eighties. They looked for unsteady solutions to Euler's equations using a rather simple but exact three state linearization on triangular grids and decomposing the solution using some effective wave models. Our approach differs from their techniques by constructing a second order accurate and conservative flux functions under the well-known classical finite volume formulation. However, our Riemann Solver is obtained by a suitable linearization procedure upon all three prescribed nodal values given on each triangle. Our numerical method is applied to a Mach 4.3 flow problem for refined unstructured triangular grid behind the body. Numerical results indicate that our technique is stable, accurate and converges successfully to a stationary solution as the cell size is reduced from the coarse lo the finest grid.     

Variational multiscale analysis of elastoplastic deformation using meshfree approximation

A variational multiscale method has been presented for efficient analysis of elastoplastic deformation problems. Severe deformation occurs in plastic region and leads to high gradient displacement. Therefore, solution needs to be refined to properly capture local deformation in plastic region. In this work, scale decomposition based on variational formulation is presented. A coarse scale and a fine scale are introduced to represent global and local behavior, respectively. The displacement is decomposed into a coarse and a fine scale. Subsequently the problem is also decomposed into a coarse and a fine scale from the variational formulation. Each scale variable is approximated using meshfree method. Adaptivity can easily and nicely be implemented in meshfree method. As a method of increasing resolution, extrinsic enrichment of partition of unity is used. Each scale problem is solved iteratively and conversed results are obtained consequently. Iteration procedure is indispensable for the elastoplastic deformation analysis. Therefore iterative solution procedure of each scale problem is naturally adequate. The proposed method is applied to the Prandtl’s punch test and shear band problem. The results are compared with those of other methods and the validity of the proposed method is demonstrated.     

A Comparison Study Between an Adaptive Quadtree Grid and Uniform Grid Upscaling for Reservoir Simulation

An adaptive quadtree grid generation algorithm is developed and applied for tracer and multiphase flow in channelized heterogeneous porous media. Adaptivity was guided using two different approaches. In the first approach, wavelet transformation was used to generate a refinement field based on permeability variations. The second approach uses flow information based on the solution of an initial-time fine-scale problem. The resulting grids were compared with uniform grid upscaling. For uniform upscaling, two commonly applied methods were used: renormalization upscaling and local-global upscaling. The velocities obtained by adaptive grid and uniformly upscaled grids, were downscaled. This procedure allows us to separate the upscaling errors, on adaptive and uniform grids, from the numerical dispersion errors resulting from solving the saturation equation on a coarse grid. The simulation results obtained by solving on flow-based adaptive quadtree grids for the case of a single phase flow show reasonable agreement with more computationally demanding fine-scale models and local-global upscaled models. For the multiphase case, the agreement is less evident, especially in piston-like displacement cases with sharp frontal movement. In such cases a non-iterative transmissibility upscaling procedure for adaptive grid is shown to significantly reduce the errors and make the adaptive grid comparable to iterative local-global upscaling. Furthermore, existence of barriers in a porous medium complicates both upscaling and grid adaptivity. This issue is addressed by adapting the grid using a combination of flow information and a permeability based heuristic criterion.     

三维非均匀不稳定渗流方程的二维不均匀粗化算法

在无源汇条件下,根据流过某一个横截面的流体流量等于流过这一横截面内所有精细网格的流体流量之和这一特点提出了粗化网格等效渗透率的计算方法。在粗化区内,利用直接解法求解二维渗流方程,再用这些解合成粗化网格的三维合成解,并由合成解计算粗化网格的等效渗透率。根据精度的要求采用了不均匀网格粗化,在流体流速大的区域采用精细网格。利用所得等效渗透率计算了粗化网格的某三维非均匀不稳定渗流场的压降解,结果表明三维非均匀不稳定渗流方程的二维不均匀粗化解非常逼近采用精细网格的解,但计算的速度比采用精细网格提高了80倍。     

Boundary conformed co-ordinate systems for selected two-dimensional fluid flow problems. Part II: Application of the BFG method

This paper gives the results of an application of the SWEs (shallow water equations) to a part of the Hamburg harbour area, which is a complex flow domain, using the BFG approach, outlined in Part I. The results of a grid doubling procedure generating the desired computational grid from a coarse initial mesh are also presented. A second class of problems which is addressed, demands time-dependent co-ordinate systems. The problems which are solved are the free surface problem for a moving wave which eventually breaks and for a wave which is reflected by the solid walls of a rectangular basin.     

Treatment of non-linearities in the numerical solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

The solution of the full non-linear set of discrete fluid flow equations is usually obtained by solving a sequence of linear equations. The type of linearization used can significantly affect the rate of convergence of the sequence to the final solution. The first objective of the present study was to determine the extent to which a full Newton–Raphson linearization of all non-linear terms enhances convergence relative to that obtained using the ‘standard’ incompressible flow linearization. A direct solution procedure was employed in this evaluation. It was found that the full linearization enhances convergence, especially when grid curvature effects are important. The direct solution of the linear set is uneconomical. The second objective of the paper was to show how the equations can be effectively solved by an iterative scheme, based on a coupled-equation line solver, which implicitly retains all the inter-equation couplings. This solution method was found to be competitive with the highly refined segregated solution methods that represent the current state-of-the-art.     

Generation of Voronoi Grid Based on Vorticity for Coarse-Scale Modeling of Flow in Heterogeneous Formations

We present a novel unstructured coarse grid generation technique based on vorticity for upscaling two-phase flow in permeable media. In the technique, the fineness of the gridblocks throughout the domain is determined by vorticity distribution such that where the larger is the vorticity at a region, the finer are the gridblocks at that region. Vorticity is obtained from single-phase flow on original fine grid, and is utilized to generate a background grid which stores spacing parameter, and is used to steer generation of triangular and finally Voronoi grids. This technique is applied to two channelized and heterogeneous models and two-phase flow simulations are performed on the generated coarse grids and, the results are compared with the ones of fine scale grid and uniformly gridded coarse models. The results show a close match of unstructured coarse grid flow results with those of fine grid, and substantial accuracy compared to uniformly gridded coarse grid model.     

Using Vorticity as an Indicator for the Generation of Optimal Coarse Grid Distribution

An improved vorticity-based gridding technique is presented and applied to create optimal non-uniform Cartesian coarse grid for numerical simulation of two-phase flow. The optimal coarse grid distribution (OCGD) is obtained in a manner to capture variations in both permeability and fluid velocity of the fine grid using a single physical quantity called “vorticity”. Only single-phase flow simulation on the fine grid is required to extract the vorticity. Based on the fine-scale vorticity information, several coarse grid models are generated for a given fine grid model. Then the vorticity map preservation error is used to predict how well each coarse grid model reproduces the fine-scale simulation results. The coarse grid model which best preserves the fine-scale vorticity, i.e. has the minimum vorticity map preservation error is recognized as an OCGD. The performance of vorticity-based optimal coarse grid is evaluated for two highly heterogeneous 2D formations. It is also shown that two-phase flow parameters such as mobility ratio have only minor impact on the performance of the predicted OCGD.     

Global convergence of inexact Newton methods for transonic flow

In computational fluid dynamics, non-linear differential equations are essential to represent important effects such as shock waves in transonic flow. Discretized versions of these non-linear equations are solved using iterative methods. In this paper an inexact Newton method using the GMRES algorithm of Saad and Schultz is examined in the context of the full potential equation of aerodynamics. In this setting, reliable and efficient convergence of Newton methods is difficult to achieve. A poor initial solution guess often leads to divergence or very slow convergence. This paper examines several possible solutions to these problems, including a standard local damping strategy for Newton's method and two continuation methods, one of which utilizes interpolation from a coarse grid solution to obtain the initial guess on a finer grid. It is shown that the continuation methods can be used to augment the local damping strategy to achieve convergence for difficult transonic flow problems. These include simple wings with shock waves as well as problems involving engine power effects. These latter cases are modelled using the assumption that each exhaust plume is isentropic but has a different total pressure and/or temperature than the freestream.     

A stable and accurate projection method on a locally refined staggered mesh

In this paper, a robust projection method on a locally refined mesh is proposed for two‐ and three‐dimensional viscous incompressible flows. The proposed method is robust not only when the interface between two meshes is located in a smooth flow region but also when the interface is located in a flow region with large gradients and/or strong unsteadiness. In numerical simulations, a locally refined mesh saves many grid points in regions of relatively small gradients compared with a uniform mesh. For efficiency and ease of implementation, we consider a two‐level blocked structure, for which both of the coarse and fine meshes are uniform Cartesian ones individually. Unfortunately, the introduction of the two‐level blocked mesh results in an important but difficult issue: coupling of the coarse and fine meshes. In this paper, by properly addressing the issue of the coupling, we propose a stable and accurate projection method on a locally refined staggered mesh for both two‐ and three‐dimensional viscous incompressible flows. The proposed projection method is based on two principles: the linear interpolation technique and the consistent discretization of both sides of the pressure Poisson equation. The proposed algorithm is straightforward owing to the linear interpolation technique, is stable and accurate, is easy to extend from two‐ to three‐dimensional flows, and is valid even when flows with large gradients cross the interface between the two meshes. The resulting pressure Poisson equation is non‐symmetric on a locally refined mesh. The numerical results for a series of exact solutions for 2D and 3D viscous incompressible flows verify the stability and accuracy of the proposed projection method. The method is also applied to some challenging problems, including turbulent flows around particles, flows induced by impulsively started/stopped particles, and flows induced by particles near solid walls, to test the stability and accuracy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

坐标变换法数值求解微通道行波电场电渗流

采用坐标变换法数值求解了耦合的Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP)方程和Navier-Stokes(NS)方程, 研究二维狭窄微通道行波电场电渗流数值解. 数值结果表明,坐标变换法能有效降低电渗流解数值解在双电层的高梯度, 有效改善数值解的收敛性和稳定性. 坐标变换的电渗流数值解和原始坐标下的数值解完全一致. 坐标变换后采用简单的网格也能得到和原始坐标下复杂网格相同的解. 给出了滑移边界的近似解与完整的PNP-NS数值解的比较. 在双电层厚度与微通道深度比值(λ/H)很小的情况下(相对深通道), 两者的解基本一致. 但在λ/H较大时(相对浅通道)滑移边界的解高于电渗流速度.      

Upscaling of Channel Systems in Two Dimensions Using Flow-Based Grids

A methodology for the gridding and upscaling of geological systems characterized by channeling is presented. The overall approach entails the use of a flow-based gridding procedure for the generation of variably refined grids capable of resolving the channel geometry, a specialized full-tensor upscaling method to capture the effects of permeability connectivity, and the use of a flux-continuous finite volume method applicable to full tensor permeability fields and non-orthogonal grids. The gridding and upscaling procedures are described in detail and then applied to several two-dimensional systems. Significant improvement in the accuracy of the coarse scale models, relative to that obtained using uniform Cartesian coarse scale models, is achieved in all cases. It is shown that, for some systems, improvement results from the use of the flow-based grid, while in other cases the improvement is mainly due to the new upscaling method.     

Flexible Unstructured Gridding for 2D Reservoir Coarse Scale Modeling using Fine Scale Permeability Filtering

Accurate up-scaling is an essential part of creating a valid reservoir coarse scale dynamic model. In this article, unstructured discretization of spatial domain is accompanied by numerical permeability up-scaling in order to construct an accurate coarse scale model. A new technique for generating a course scale triangular mesh is presented in which the density of elements in key flow regions is kept high to capture accuracy. The fine scale permeability map is investigated using image processing techniques, especially steerable filters, and the results are converted into a high-resolution element size map. This element size map will be refined by the integration of other important factors such as well-position effects and used to construct a coarse triangular mesh. The combination of flux-continuous pressure approximation and mass conservative, total variation diminishing finite volume schemes have been considered to solve two phase flow equations on the control volume finite element mesh. Fine scale simulations results are compared with the coarse scale ones for a series of water flooding examples to investigate the efficiency and accuracy of the presented gridding methodology. This method is developed for 2D cases, but can be easily extended to 3D problems.     

Rotor wake capture improvement based on high-order spatially accurate schemes and chimera grids

A high-order upwind scheme has been developed to capture the vortex wake of a helicopter rotor in the hover based on chimera grids. In this paper, an improved fifth-order weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme is adopted to interpolate the higher-order left and right states across a cell interface with the Roe Riemann solver updating inviscid flux, and is compared with the monotone upwind scheme for scalar conservation laws (MUSCL). For profitably capturing the wake and enforcing the period boundary condition, the computation regions of flows are discretized by using the structured chimera grids composed of a fine rotor grid and a cylindrical background grid. In the background grid, the mesh cells located in the wake regions are refined after the solution reaches the approximate convergence. Considering the interpolation characteristic of the WENO scheme, three layers of the hole boundary and the interpolation boundary are searched. The performance of the schemes is investigated in a transonic flow and a subsonic flow around the hovering rotor. The results reveal that the present approach has great capabilities in capturing the vortex wake with high resolution, and the WENO scheme has much lower numerical dissipation in comparison with the MUSCL scheme.     

Local and parallel finite element algorithms for time-dependent convection-diffusion equations

Local and parallel finite element algorithms based on two-grid discretization for the time-dependent convection-diffusion equations are presented. These algorithms are motivated by the observation that, for a solution to the convection-diffusion problem, low frequency components can be approximated well by a relatively coarse grid and high frequency components can be computed on a fine grid by some local and parallel proce- dures. Hence, these local and parallel algorithms only involve one small original problem on the coarse mesh and some correction problems on the local fine grid. One technical tool for the analysis is the local a priori estimates that are also obtained. Some numerical examples are given to support our theoretical analvsis.     

A structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid‐based model for the shallow water equations

In large‐scale shallow flow simulations, local high‐resolution predictions are often required in order to reduce the computational cost without losing the accuracy of the solution. This is normally achieved by solving the governing equations on grids refined only to those areas of interest. Grids with varying resolution can be generated by different approaches, e.g. nesting methods, patching algorithms and adaptive unstructured or quadtree gridding techniques. This work presents a new structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid system as an alternative to the existing approaches to provide local high‐resolution mesh. On generating a structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid, the whole computational domain is first discretized using a coarse background grid. Local refinement is then achieved by directly allocating a specific subdivision level to each background grid cell. The neighbour information is specified by simple mathematical relationships and no explicit storage is needed. Hence, the structured property of the uniform grid is maintained. After employing some simple interpolation formulae, the governing shallow water equations are solved using a second‐order finite volume Godunov‐type scheme in a similar way as that on a uniform grid. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A code-independent technique for computational verification of fluid mechanics and heat transfer problems

The goal of this paper is to present a versatile framework for solution verification of PDE＇s. We first generalize the Richardson Extrapolation technique to an optimized extrapolation solution procedure that constructs the best consistent solution from a set of two or three coarse grid solution in the discrete norm of choice. This technique generalizes the Least Square Extrapolation method introduced by one of the author and W. Shyy. We second establish the conditioning number of the problem in a reduced space that approximates the main feature of the numerical solution thanks to a sensitivity analysis. Overall our method produces an a posteriori error estimation in this reduced space of approximation. The key feature of our method is that our construction does not require an internal knowledge of the software neither the source code that produces the solution to be verified. It can be applied in principle as a postprocessing procedure to off the shelf commercial code. We demonstrate the robustness of our method with two steady problems that are separately an incompressible back step flow test case and a heat transfer problem for a battery. Our error estimate might be ultimately verified with a near by manufactured solution. While our pro- cedure is systematic and requires numerous computation of residuals, one can take advantage of distributed computing to get quickly the error estimate.