Evaluation of Euler fluxes by a high-order CFD scheme: shock instability

The construction of Euler fluxes is an important step in shock-capturing/upwind schemes. It is well known that unsuitable fluxes are responsible for many shock anomalies, such as the carbuncle phenomenon. Three kinds of flux vector splittings (FVSs) as well as three kinds of flux difference splittings (FDSs) are evaluated for the shock instability by a fifth-order weighted compact nonlinear scheme. The three FVSs are Steger–Warming splitting, van Leer splitting and kinetic flux vector splitting (KFVS). The three FDSs are Roe's splitting, advection upstream splitting method (AUSM) type splitting and Harten–Lax–van Leer (HLL) type splitting. Numerical results indicate that FVSs and high dissipative FDSs undergo a relative lower risk on the shock instability than that of low dissipative FDSs. However, none of the fluxes evaluated in the present study can entirely avoid the shock instability. Generally, the shock instability may be caused by any of the following factors: low dissipation, high Mach number, unsuitable grid distribution, large grid aspect ratio, and the relative shock-internal flow state (or position) between upstream and downstream shock waves. It comes out that the most important factor is the relative shock-internal state. If the shock-internal state is closer to the downstream state, the computation is at higher susceptibility to the shock instability. Wall-normal grid distribution has a greater influence on the shock instability than wall-azimuthal grid distribution because wall-normal grids directly impact on the shock-internal position. High shock intensity poses a high risk on the shock instability, but its influence is not as much as the shock-internal state. Large grid aspect ratio is also a source of the shock instability. Some results of a second-order scheme and a first-order scheme are also given. The comparison between the high-order scheme and the two low-order schemes indicates that high-order schemes are at a higher risk of the shock instability. Adding an entropy fix is very helpful in suppressing the shock instability for the two low-order schemes. When the high-order scheme is used, the entropy fix still works well for Roe's flux, but its effect on the Steger–Warming flux is trivial and not much clear.