An improved Rhie–Chow interpolation scheme for the smoothed‐interface immersed boundary method

Rhie–Chow interpolation is a commonly used method in CFD calculations on a co‐located mesh in order to suppress non‐physical pressure oscillations arising from chequerboard effects. A fully parallelized smoothed‐interface immersed boundary method on a co‐located grid is described in this paper. We discuss the necessity of modifications to the original Rhie–Chow interpolation in order to deal with a locally refined mesh. Numerical simulation with the modified scheme of Choi shows that numerical dissipation due to Rhie–Chow interpolation introduces significant errors at the immersed boundary. To address this issue, we develop an improved Rhie–Chow interpolation scheme that is shown to increase the accuracy in resolving the flow near the immersed boundary. We compare our improved scheme with the modified scheme of Choi by parallel simulations of benchmark flows: (i) flow past a stationary cylinder; (ii) flow past an oscillating cylinder; and (iii) flow past a stationary elliptical cylinder, where Reynolds numbers are tested in the range 10–200. Our improved scheme is significantly more accurate and compares favourably with a staggered grid algorithm. We also develop a scheme to compute the boundary force for the direct‐forcing immersed boundary method efficiently. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparative study of direct‐forcing immersed boundary‐lattice Boltzmann methods for stationary complex boundaries

In this study, we assess several interface schemes for stationary complex boundary flows under the direct‐forcing immersed boundary‐lattice Boltzmann methods (IB‐LBM) based on a split‐forcing lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE). Our strategy is to couple various interface schemes, which were adopted in the previous direct‐forcing immersed boundary methods (IBM), with the split‐forcing LBE, which enables us to directly use the direct‐forcing concept in the lattice Boltzmann calculation algorithm with a second‐order accuracy without involving the Navier–Stokes equation. In this study, we investigate not only common diffuse interface schemes but also a sharp interface scheme. For the diffuse interface scheme, we consider explicit and implicit interface schemes. In the calculation of velocity interpolation and force distribution, we use the 2‐ and 4‐point discrete delta functions, which give the second‐order approximation. For the sharp interface scheme, we deal with the exterior sharp interface scheme, where we impose the force density on exterior (solid) nodes nearest to the boundary. All tested schemes show a second‐order overall accuracy when the simulation results of the Taylor–Green decaying vortex are compared with the analytical solutions. It is also confirmed that for stationary complex boundary flows, the sharper the interface scheme, the more accurate the results are. In the simulation of flows past a circular cylinder, the results from each interface scheme are comparable to those from other corresponding numerical schemes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of two‐phase flow–body interaction problems using direct forcing/fictitious domain–level set method

In the present paper, a direct forcing/fictitious domain (DF/FD)–level set method is proposed to simulate the twophase flow–body interaction. The DF/FD does not sacrifice accuracy and robustness by employing a discrete δ (Dirac delta) function to transfer quantities between the Eulerian nodes and Lagrangian points explicitly as the immersed boundary method. The advantages of this approach are the simple concept, the easy implementation and the utilization of original governing equation without modification. The main idea is to combine DF/FD method with the level set method in the Cartesian coordinates. We present the results of a number of test cases to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for single‐phase flow–body interaction problem and the two‐phase flows with a stationary body. Eventually, the simulations of various water entry problems have been conducted to validate the capability and the accuracy of the present method on solving the twophase flow–body interaction. Consequently, the present results are found to be in good agreement with those of previous studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modal decomposition‐based global stability analysis for reduced order modeling of 2D and 3D wake flows

The method for computation of stability modes for two‐ and three‐dimensional flows is presented. The method is based on the dynamic mode decomposition of the data resulting from DNS of the flow in the regime close to stable flow (fixed‐point dynamics, small perturbations about steady flow). The proposed approach is demonstrated on the wake flows past a 2D, circular cylinder, and a sphere. The resulting modes resemble the eigenmodes computed conventionally from global stability analysis and are used in model order reduction of the flow. The designed low‐dimensional Galerkin model uses continuous mode interpolation between dynamic mode decomposition mode bases and reproduces the dynamics of Navier–Stokes equations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid immersed‐boundary and multi‐block lattice Boltzmann method for simulating fluid and moving‐boundaries interactions

A numerical method is developed for modelling the interactions between incompressible viscous fluid and moving boundaries. The principle of this method is introducing the immersed‐boundary concept in the framework of the lattice Boltzmann method, and improving the accuracy and efficiency of the simulation by refining the mesh near moving boundaries. Besides elastic boundary with a constitutive law, the method can also efficiently simulate solid moving‐boundary interacting with fluid by employing the direct forcing technique. The method is validated by the simulations of flow past a circular cylinder, two cylinders moving with respect to each other and flow around a hovering wing. The versatility of the method is demonstrated by the numerical studies including elastic filament flapping in the wake of a cylinder and fish‐like bodies swimming in quiescent fluid. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient coupling of direct forcing immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method and finite element method to simulate fluid-structure interactions

Fluid-structure interactions (FSI) of rigid and flexible bodies are simulated in this article. For the fluid flow, multidirect forcing immersed boundary method (IBM) is adopted to capture the moving boundary, and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to evolve the flow field. Compared with our previous no-penetration IBM, less iterations are required in this work. In addition, larger velocity in lattice units can be used and the nonphysical force oscillations are suppressed due to the C³ 6-point kernel. Multi-relaxation-time collision operator and local grid refinement are also adopted in LBM to enhance the numerical stability and efficiency. To improve the efficiency of the FSI coupling algorithm, the mesh of the deformable structure can be coarser than the Lagrangian mesh using Newton-Cotes formulas to integrate the traction on the structure surface. A variety of benchmarks, including flow around a circular cylinder with Reynold number ranging from 20 to 200, forced oscillation of a circular cylinder, vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of an elastically mounted circular cylinder in two degrees of freedom, and VIV of an elastic cantilever beam attached to a circular cylinder, are carried out to evaluate the accuracy and stability of the present coupling algorithm. For the benchmark FSI problem considered in this article, a reduction of 54% of the calculation time is achieved using coarser structure mesh. As an application of the FSI coupling algorithm, the mechanism of an elastic beam in the wake of a circular cylinder is discussed.     

Improvement of mass source/sink for an immersed boundary method

An improved immersed boundary method using a mass source/sink as well as momentum forcing is developed for simulating flows over or inside complex geometries. The present method is based on the Navier–Stokes solver adopting the fractional step method and a staggered Cartesian grid system. A more accurate formulation of the mass source/sink is derived by considering mass conservation of the virtual cells in the fluid crossed by the immersed boundary. Two flow problems (the decaying vortex problem and uniform flow past a circular cylinder) are used to validate the proposed formulation. The results indicate that the accuracy near the immersed boundary is improved by introducing the accurate mass source/sink. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stability analysis of an oscillating body located in fluid flow using automatic differentiation

This paper presents a stability analysis of an oscillating body subjected to fluid forces located in a transient incompressible viscous flow. If the body is supported by elastic springs, oscillation will begin. If the characteristic period of the body and the excited oscillating period due to fluid forces match each other, resonance can occur. Stability analysis is therefore needed to determine the nonlinear behavior of the body. This paper presents an analysis of the changing stability of bodies by the numerical computation. To implement the computation, the motion of fluid around a body is expressed by the Navier–Stokes equation described in the arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian form. The fluid influence on the body is discretized by the finite element method based on a mixed interpolation by the bubble function in space. The motion of the body is assumed to be expressed by the equations of motion. To evaluate stability, stability function is defined by the total energy of the oscillating body. The stability is judged according to a stability index, obtained by the use of the automatic differentiation (AD) of the stability function. AD is a derivative computation method that gives high accuracy. By the use of AD, the second‐order derivative matrix, which is needed to compute the stability index, can be obtained exactly. For the numerical studies, analyses of one degree of freedom and two degrees of freedom (2DOF) for a circular cylinder and 2DOF for a rectangular cylinder are carried out. A combination of a cylinder and supporting elastic spring can produce stable, neutral and unstable states. It is shown that the stability of the cylinder can be determined by the stability index. This paper shows new possibilities for stability analysis of bodies located in a fluid flow. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An iterative method for the computation of the response of linearised Navier–Stokes equations to harmonic forcing and application to forced cylinder wakes

The central aim of this paper is the development and application of an efficient, iterative methodology for the computation of the perturbation fields induced by harmonic forcing of the linearised Navier–Stokes equations. The problem is formulated directly in the frequency domain, and the resulting system of equations is solved iteratively until convergence. The method is easily implemented to any implicit code that can solve iteratively the steady‐state Navier–Stokes equations. In this paper, it is applied to investigate the flow around a static cylinder with pulsating approaching flow and a cylinder undergoing forced stream‐wise oscillations. All terms of the perturbation kinetic energy equation are computed, and it is shown that perturbations grow by extracting energy from two sources: the underlying base flow field and the externally provided energy that maintains the imposed oscillation. The periodic drag force acting on the cylinder is also computed, and it is demonstrated that Morrison's equation is a simple model that can estimate with good accuracy the amplitude and phase of this force with respect to the approaching flow. The perturbation fields induced by periodic inlet flow (static cylinder) and forced stream‐wise cylinder oscillation are closely related: the velocity fields are identical in the appropriate reference frames, and a simple expression is derived, which links the pressures in the two flow cases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quasi-static transient and mixed mode oscillations induced by fractional derivatives effect on the slow flow near folded singularity

This paper aims at offering an insight into the dynamical behaviors of incommensurate fractional-order singularly perturbed van der Pol oscillators subjected to constant forcing, especially when the forcing is close to Andronov–Hopf bifurcation points. These bifurcation points are predicted thanks to the theorem on stability of incommensurate fractional-order systems, as functions of the forcing and fractional derivative orders. When the forcing is chosen near Andronov–Hopf bifurcation, the dynamics of fractional-order systems show a static-looking transient regime whose length increases exponentially with the closeness to the bifurcation point. This peculiar phenomenon is not common in numerical simulation of dynamical systems. We show that this quasi-static transient behavior is due to the combine action of the slow passage effect at folded saddle-node singularity and fractional derivation memory effect on the slow flow around this singularity; this forces the system to remain for a long time in the vicinity of its equilibrium point, though unstable. The system frees oneself from this quasi-static transient state by spiraling before entering relaxation oscillation. Such a situation results in mixed mode oscillations in the oscillatory regime. One obtains mixed mode oscillations from a very simple system: A two-variable system subjected to constant forcing.     

Effect of regularized delta function on accuracy of immersed boundary method

The immersed boundary method is an effective technique for modeling and simulating fluid-structure interactions especially in the area of biomechanics. The effect of the regularized delta function on the accuracy is an important subject in the property study. A method of manufactured solutions is used in the research. The computational code is first verified to be mistake-free by using smooth manufactured solutions. Then, a jump in the manufactured solution for pressure is introduced to study the accuracy of the immersed boundary method. Four kinds of regularized delta functions are used to test the effect on the accuracy analysis. By analyzing the discretization errors, the accuracy of the immersed boundary method is proved to be first-order. The results show that the regularized delta function cannot improve the accuracy, but it can change the discretization errors in the entire computational domain.     

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.     

An improved hybrid Cartesian/immersed boundary method for fluid–solid flows

An improved hybrid Cartesian/immersed boundary method is proposed based on ghost point treatment. A second‐order Taylor series expansion is used to evaluate the values at the ghost points, and an inverse distance weighting method to interpolate the values due to its properties of preserving local extrema and smooth reconstruction. The present method effectively eliminates numerical instabilities caused by matrix inversion and flexibly adopts the interpolation in the vicinity of the boundary. Some typical fluid–solid flows, including viscous flow past a circular cylinder, a sphere, two cylinders in a side‐by‐side arrangement, and an array of 18 staggered cylinders, are examined. These benchmark simulations reasonably indicate the reliability and capability of the present method. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical modeling of flow past a volumeless and thin rigid body using direct forcing immersed boundary method

The new capability has been added as the numerical method for modeling volumeless and thin rigid bodies to the direct forcing immersed boundary (DFIB) method. The DFIB approach is based on adding a virtual force to the Navier–Stokes equations of incompressible flow to account for the interaction between the fluid and structures. The volume of a solid function (VOS) identifies the stationary or moving solid structures in a given fluid domain. A new VOS-based algorithm was developed to identify thin, rigid structure boundary points in fluid flow and ensure that the fluid cannot cross through the boundary of a thin rigid structure while moving or stationary. The DFIB method was first validated in a three-dimensional (3D) turbulent flow over a circular cylinder. The large-eddy simulation simulated the turbulent flow scales. The proposed algorithm was tested using a 3D turbulent flow past a stationary and rotating Savonius wind turbine that functions as a thin, rigid body. The validation results showed that the selected DFIB approach, combined with the novel algorithm, could simulate a thin, volumeless, rigid structure that is stationary and rotating in incompressible turbulent flows. The current method is also applicable for two-way fluid-structure interaction problems.     

Analytical and numerical studies of the boundary slip in the immersed boundary‐thermal lattice Boltzmann method

We analytically and numerically investigate the boundary slip, including the velocity slip and the temperature jump, in immersed boundary‐thermal lattice Boltzmann methods (IB‐TLBMs) with the two‐relaxation‐time collision operator. We derive the theoretical equation for the relaxation parameters considering the effect of the advection velocity on the temperature jump of the IB‐TLBMs. The analytical and numerical solutions demonstrate that the proposed iterative correction methods without the computational cost of the sparse matrix solver reduce the boundary slip and boundary‐value deviation as effectively as the implicit correction method for any relaxation time. Because the commonly used multi‐direct forcing method does not consider the contributions of the body force to the momentum flux, it cannot completely eliminate the boundary slip because of the numerical instability for a long relaxation time. Both types of proposed iterative correction methods are more numerically stable than the implicit correction method. In simulations of flow past a circular cylinder and of natural convection, the present iterative correction methods yield adequate results without the errors of the velocity slip, the temperature jump, and the boundary‐value deviation for any relaxation time parameters and for any number of Lagrangian points per length. The combination of the present methods and the two‐relaxation‐time collision operator is suitable for simulating fluid flow with thermal convection in the multiblock method in which the relaxation time increases in inverse proportion to the grid size.     

Assessment of global linear stability analysis using a time‐stepping approach for compressible flows

Global linear stability analysis combined with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is considered useful for understanding the physics of fluid flows. However, the numerical techniques of global linear stability analysis for compressible flows have not been well established in comparison with those for incompressible flows. In this study, we develop and assess a set of appropriate numerical techniques required to conduct a global linear stability analysis for compressible flows. For the eigensystem analysis, the Arnoldi method combined with time integration is in effect to preserve the memory (RAM) size of the computer. The compact difference scheme is used for the CFD analysis from the viewpoints of computing accurate global modes and saving memory by reducing the number of grid points to obtain the necessary spatial resolution. To assess the proposed method, two‐dimensional compressible flow problems, including regularized cavity flow, flow around a square cylinder, and the compressible mixing layer, are analyzed, and it is confirmed that the proposed method can obtain accurate mode shapes, growth rate, and frequency of the corresponding global modes. In addition, influences and an appropriate formulation of the outflow boundary conditions are investigated. Results reveal that the outflow boundary causes spurious unstable modes in the global linear stability analysis, and the radiation and outflow boundary condition and the extension of the computational domain with grid stretching keep the spurious unstable modes to a minimum. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical simulation of bubble and droplet deformation by a level set approach with surface tension in three dimensions

In this paper we present a three‐dimensional Navier–Stokes solver for incompressible two‐phase flow problems with surface tension and apply the proposed scheme to the simulation of bubble and droplet deformation. One of the main concerns of this study is the impact of surface tension and its discretization on the overall convergence behavior and conservation properties. Our approach employs a standard finite difference/finite volume discretization on uniform Cartesian staggered grids and uses Chorin's projection approach. The free surface between the two fluid phases is tracked with a level set (LS) technique. Here, the interface conditions are implicitly incorporated into the momentum equations by the continuum surface force method. Surface tension is evaluated using a smoothed delta function and a third‐order interpolation. The problem of mass conservation for the two phases is treated by a reinitialization of the LS function employing a regularized signum function and a global fixed point iteration. All convective terms are discretized by a WENO scheme of fifth order. Altogether, our approach exhibits a second‐order convergence away from the free surface. The discretization of surface tension requires a smoothing scheme near the free surface, which leads to a first‐order convergence in the smoothing region. We discuss the details of the proposed numerical scheme and present the results of several numerical experiments concerning mass conservation, convergence of curvature, and the application of our solver to the simulation of two rising bubble problems, one with small and one with large jumps in material parameters, and the simulation of a droplet deformation due to a shear flow in three space dimensions. Furthermore, we compare our three‐dimensional results with those of quasi‐two‐dimensional and two‐dimensional simulations. This comparison clearly shows the need for full three‐dimensional simulations of droplet and bubble deformation to capture the correct physical behavior. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical modeling of wave interactions with coastal structures by a constrained interpolation profile/immersed boundary method

A high‐order difference method based multiphase model is proposed to simulate nonlinear interactions between water wave and submerged coastal structures. The model is based on the Navier–Stokes equations using a constrained interpolation profile (CIP) method for the flow solver, and employs an immersed boundary method (IBM) for the treatment of wave–structure interactions. A more accurate interface capturing scheme, the volume of fluid/weighed line interface calculation (VOF/WLIC) scheme, is adopted as the interface capturing method. A series of computations are performed to verify the application of the model for simulations of fluid interaction with various structures. These problems include flow over a fixed cylinder, water entry of a circular cylinder and solitary waves passing various submerged coastal structures. Computations are compared with the available analytical, experimental and other numerical results and good agreement is obtained. The results of this study demonstrate the accuracy and applications of the proposed model to simulate the nonlinear flow phenomena and capture the complex free surface flow. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical investigation on vortex-induced vibration of an elastically mounted circular cylinder at low Reynolds number using the fictitious domain method

A direct numerical simulation of two-dimensional (2D) flow past an elastically mounted circular cylinder at low Reynolds number using the fictitious domain method had been undertaken. The cylinder motion was modelled by a two degree-of-freedom mass–spring–damper system. The computing code was verified against a benchmark problem in which flow past a stationary circular cylinder is simulated. Then, analyses of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) responses, drag and lift forces and the phase and vortex structures were carried out. Results show that the cylinder's non-dimensional cross-flow response amplitude reaches its summit of 0.572 in the ‘lock-in’ regime. The ‘2S’, instead of the ‘2P’, vortex shedding mode is dominated in the ‘lower’ branch for this 2D low-Re VIV. A secondary oscillation is observed in the lift force when ‘lock-in’ occurs. It is shown that this secondary component changes the phase, offset the energy input by the primary component and thus reduces the cylinder responses. Effects of the Skop–Griffin parameter on cylinder responses were also investigated.     

NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE FLOW PAST A CYLINDER EXCITED TRANSVERSELY TO THE INCIDENT STREAM. PART 1: LOCK-IN ZONE,HYDRODYNAMIC FORCES AND WAKE GEOMETRY

The numerical study of the flow past a circular cylinder forced to oscillate transversely to the incident stream is presented herein, at a fixed Reynolds number equal to 106. The finite element technique was favoured for the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations, in the formulation where the stream function and the vorticity are the field variables. The cylinder oscillation frequency ranged between 0·80 and 1·20 of the natural vortex-shedding frequency, and the oscillation amplitude extended up to 50% of the cylinder diameter. Since the resolution of the characteristics of synchronized wakes is the focus of the study, the first task is the determination of the boundary of the lock-in region. The computation revealed that, when the cylinder oscillation frequency exceeds the frequency of the natural shedding of vortices, the flow is not absolutely periodic at subsequent cycles but a quasiperiodic flow pattern occurs, which creates difficulty in the determination of the lock-in boundary. The time histories of the drag and lift forces for various oscillation parameters are presented, while the vorticity contours were favoured for the numerical flow visualization. The hydrodynamic forces, the phase angle between the lift force and the cylinder displacement, and the parameters of the wake geometry when steady state was reached, are presented in cumulative diagrams. These diagrams indicate the effect of the oscillation parameters on the hydrodynamic forces and on the wake geometry.