A consistent and conservative scheme for incompressible MHD flows at a low magnetic Reynolds number. Part III: On a staggered mesh

The consistent and conservative scheme developed on a rectangular collocated mesh M.-J. Ni, R. Munipalli, N.B. Morley, P. Huang, M.A. Abdou, A current density conservative scheme for incompressible MHD flows at a low magnetic Reynolds number. Part I: on a rectangular collocated grid system, Journal of Computational Physics 227 (2007) 174–204] and on an arbitrary collocated mesh M.-J. Ni, R. Munipalli, P. Huang, N.B. Morley, M.A. Abdou, A current density conservative scheme for incompressible MHD flows at a low magnetic Reynolds number. Part II: on an arbitrary collocated mesh, Journal of Computational Physics 227 (2007) 205–228] has been extended and specially designed for calculation of the Lorentz force on a staggered grid system (Part III) by solving the electrical potential equation for magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) at a low magnetic Reynolds number. In a staggered mesh, pressure (p) and electrical potential (φ) are located in the cell center, while velocities and current fluxes are located on the cell faces of a main control volume. The scheme numerically meets the physical conservation laws, charge conservation law and momentum conservation law. Physically, the Lorentz force conserves the momentum when the magnetic field is constant or spatial coordinate independent. The calculation of current density fluxes on cell faces is conducted using a scheme consistent with the discretization for solution of the electrical potential Poisson equation, which can ensure the calculated current density conserves the charge. A divergence formula of the Lorentz force is used to calculate the Lorentz force at the cell center of a main control volume, which can numerically conserve the momentum at constant or spatial coordinate independent magnetic field. The calculated cell-center Lorentz forces are then interpolated to the cell faces, which are used to obtain the corresponding velocity fluxes by solving the momentum equations. The “conservative” is an important property of the scheme, which can guarantee computational accuracy of MHD flows at high Hartmann number with a strongly non-uniform mesh employed to resolve the Hartmann layers and side layers. 2D fully developed MHD flows with analytical solutions available have been conducted to validate the scheme at a staggered mesh. 3D MHD flows, with the experimental data available, at a constant magnetic field in a rectangular duct with sudden expansion and at a varying magnetic field in a rectangular duct are conducted on a staggered mesh to verify the computational accuracy of the scheme. It is expected that the scheme for the Lorentz force can be employed together with a fully conservative scheme for the convective term and the pressure term Y. Morinishi, T.S. Lund, O.V. Vasilyev, P. Moin, Fully conservative higher order finite difference schemes for incompressible flow, Journal of Computational Physics 143 (1998) 90–124] for direct simulation of MHD turbulence and MHD instability with good accuracy at a staggered mesh.