An efficient front‐tracking method for simulation of multi‐density bubbles

In this article, a masked bubble strategy is proposed using the front‐tracking method when simulation of multi‐density bubbles to reduce remarkably the computational cost from both the RAM usage and the number of computations at each time step comparing with the regular method. In the masked bubble strategy, instead of using full domain to update the properties at each time step, each bubble is considered as enclosed in the smallest box required to compute the properties based on the Peskin's function, which needs at least two full mesh sizes from both sides of the interface of each bubble in any directions. To show the performance of the masked bubble strategy in the front‐tracking method, we study the multi‐density bubbles motion in a curved duct flow induced by a pressure gradient in the absence of gravity. To solve the density Poisson equation, the parallel direct solver scheme is tested. The comparison of numerical simulations at the same conditions indicates that the parallel direct solver scheme under the masked bubble strategy considerably reduces the computational time and RAM usage relative to the regular full‐domain method, providing using simulations on finer grid resolutions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the numerical computation of laminar boundary layers at a phase-changing,gas-liquid interface

The two-dimensional, laminar boundary-layer equations of heat, mass and momentum at a smooth, phase-changing, gas-liquid interface are solved numerically by the Keller Box method. The gas and liquid regimes are embedded in a single marching scheme which computes interfacial parameters implicitly. Results of both self-similar and non-similar boundary-layer computations are presented and effects of mild pressure gradient, a mean current in the liquid, and free-stream vapour concentration on the interfacial parameters are analysed. In order to assess the accuracy of the method, several self-similar problems are solved by Runge-Kutta integration and results are compared to those obtained by the finite-difference scheme. Agreement is excellent in all cases.     

Accurate computation of convective transport in transient two-phase flow

The Van Leer method for the computation of convective fluxes is extended to two-phase flow. By preventing spurious undershoots and overshoots, the scheme preserves physical realism while maintaining high-order accuracy. This is particulary important for two-phase flows, since phase exchange terms are typically a function of volume fraction products and numerical diffusion can incorrectly mix the two phases. The scheme described here is constructed to guarantee that the sum of the volume fractions is always unity and that the volume fractions are always greater than or equal to zero. Various test problems are computed to demonstrate the accuracy of the method and to show how the scheme might be incorporated in existing computational methods. In addition to multiphase flow applications, setting equal phase velocities results in a volume marker scheme that is well suited to single-phase interface tracking problems.     

EFFICIENT COMPUTATIONS USING UPWIND BIASED SCHEMES

A new multiblock unfactored implicit upwind scheme for inviscid two-dimensional flow calculations is presented. Spatial discretization is carried out by means of an upwind first-order method; an original extension to higher accuracy is also presented. The integration algorithm is constructed in a ‘δ’ form that provides a direct derivation of the scheme and leads to an efficient computational method. Fast solutions of the linear systems arising at each time step are obtained by means of the bi-conjugate gradient stabilized technique. The computational results for super/hypersonic steady state flows illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm.     

Mixed convection flow over a vertical wedge embedded in a highly porous medium

 The steady mixed convection flow over a vertical wedge with a magnetic field embedded in a porous medium has been investigated. The effects of the permeability of the medium, surface mass transfer and viscous dissipation on the flow and temperature fields have been included in the analysis. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations governing the flow field have been solved numerically using the Keller box method. The skin friction and heat transfer are found to increase with the parameters characterizing the permeability of the medium, buoyancy force, magnetic field and pressure gradient. However the effect of the permeability and magnetic field on the heat transfer is very small. The heat transfer increases with the Prandtl number, but the skin friction decreases. The buoyancy force which assists the forced convection flow causes an overshoot in the velocity profiles. Both the skin friction and heat transfer increase with suction and the effect of injection is just the reverse. Received on 21 May 1999     

Inverse laminar boundary-layer problems with assigned shear. The mechul function revisited

An inverse method is presented which accurately determines the pressure distribution for assigned wall shear in a two-dimensional, laminar, incompressible boundary layer. The method reformulates the mechul function scheme of Cebeci and Keller to produce a stable solution in the marching direction and to increase accuracy in the normal direction. In the reformulation a modified pressure gradient parameter variation in the normal direction is used in conjunction with three-point backward differences for streamwise derivatives and fourth-order accurate splines for normal derivatives. The resulting spline-finite difference equations are solved by Newton-Raphson iteration together with partial pivoting. Numerical solutions are presented for self-similar and non self-similar flows and compared with published results.     

Further experiences with computing non‐hydrostatic free‐surface flows involving water waves

A semi‐implicit, staggered finite volume technique for non‐hydrostatic, free‐surface flow governed by the incompressible Euler equations is presented that has a proper balance between accuracy, robustness and computing time. The procedure is intended to be used for predicting wave propagation in coastal areas. The splitting of the pressure into hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic components is utilized. To ease the task of discretization and to enhance the accuracy of the scheme, a vertical boundary‐fitted co‐ordinate system is employed, permitting more resolution near the bottom as well as near the free surface. The issue of the implementation of boundary conditions is addressed. As recently proposed by the present authors, the Keller‐box scheme for accurate approximation of frequency wave dispersion requiring a limited vertical resolution is incorporated. The both locally and globally mass conserved solution is achieved with the aid of a projection method in the discrete sense. An efficient preconditioned Krylov subspace technique to solve the discretized Poisson equation for pressure correction with an unsymmetric matrix is treated. Some numerical experiments to show the accuracy, robustness and efficiency of the proposed method are presented. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An ‘assumed deviatoric stress–pressure–velocity’ mixed finite element method for unsteady,convective, incompressible viscous flow: Part I: Theoretical development

A formulation of a mixed finite element method for the analysis of unsteady, convective, incompressible viscous flow is presented in which: (i) the deviatoric-stress, pressure, and velocity are discretized in each element, (ii) the deviatoric stress and pressure are subject to the constraint of the homogeneous momentum balance condition in each element, a priori, (iii) the convective acceleration is treated by the conventional Galerkin approach, (iv) the finite element system of equations involves only the constant term of the pressure field (which can otherwise be an arbitrary polynomial) in each element, in addition to the nodal velocities, and (v) all integrations are performed by the necessary order quadrature rules. A fundamental analysis of the stability of the numerical scheme is presented. The method is easily applicable to 3-dimensional problems. However, solutions to several problems of 2-dimensional Navier-Stokes' flow, and their comparisons with available solutions in terms of accuracy and efficiency, are discussed in detail in Part II of this paper.     

MHD non-Darcian flow through a non-isothermal vertical surface embedded in a porous medium with radiation

The effect of MHD on steady two-dimensional laminar mixed flow about a vertical porous surface is numerically analyzed. Also the effects of radiation and heat generation and absorption are considered. A power law variation of temperature along the vertical wall is assumed. The nonlinear boundary-layer equations were transformed and the resulting differential equations were solved by an implicit finite difference scheme (Keller box method). Numerical results for the velocity distribution and the temperature distribution are presented for various values of Prandtl number Pr, magnetic parameter, porous medium parameter and internal heat generation or absorption coefficient. Further validation with previous works is carried out.     

Large eddy simulation of flow around a rectangular cylinder

A large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flow around a stationary rectangular cylinder at high Reynolds number of 2.2×10⁴ is conducted as the first step to prove the applicability of LES to practical engineering problems. Time-averaged and phase-averaged velocities and turbulent stresses are obtained and they are compared with the experimental data. To investigate mesh dependence on computational results of the LES, two kinds of grid resolution are used. In addition, the effect of a second-order upwind scheme QUICK for convection terms is also investigated due to its dependence on grid resolution. The drag coefficients, the base pressure coefficients and Strouhal numbers are in fairly good agreement with the experimental results, while the computational results show that the artificial dissipative and dispersive effect of QUICK is large in the vicinity of the cylinder in our computation. Thus, it is necessary to use higher-order upwind schemes to reduce the numerical errors, since it is effective in applying LES to practical engineering problems with complicated geometry.     

Founding editor Dr Philip M. Gresho

A numerical technique is presented for the approximation of vertical gradient of the non‐hydrostatic pressure arising in the Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations for simulating non‐hydrostatic free‐surface flows. It is based on the Keller‐box method that take into account the effect of non‐hydrostatic pressure with a very small number of vertical grid points. As a result, the proposed technique is capable of simulating relatively short wave propagation, where both frequency dispersion and non‐linear effects play an important role, in an accurate and efficient manner. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate this; accurate wave characteristics are already achieved with only two layers. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling of drag reduction in turbulent channel flow with hydrophobic walls by FVM method and weakly-compressible flow equations

In this paper the effects of hydrophobic wall on skin-friction drag in the channel flow are investigated through large eddy simulation on the basis of weaklycompressible flow equations with the MacCormack's scheme on collocated mesh in the FVM framework. The slip length model is adopted to describe the behavior of the slip velocities in the streamwise and spanwise directions at the interface between the hydrophobic wall and turbulent channel flow. Simulation results are presented by analyzing flow behaviors over hydrophobic wall with the Smagorinky subgrid-scale model and a dynamic model on computational meshes of different resolutions. Comparison and analysis are made on the distributions of timeaveraged velocity, velocity fluctuations, Reynolds stress as well as the skin-friction drag. Excellent agreement between the present study and previous results demonstrates the accuracy of the simple classical second-order scheme in representing turbulent vertox near hydrophobic wall. In addition, the relation of drag reduction efficiency versus time-averaged slip velocity is established. It is also foundthat the decrease of velocity gradient in the close wall region is responsible for the drag reduction. Considering its advantages of high calculation precision and efficiency, the present method has good prospect in its application to practical projects.     

Improvement of a pressure gradient method and its application to an unsteady flow problem

The pressure gradient method using velocity components and components of a pressure gradient as dependent variables has been modified to solve incompressible Newtonian fluid flow problems numerically. Applying this modified method to unsteady-state development of flow in a circular cavity shows that, at least for the case of a low Reynolds number flow, relative errors produced by the proposed method are smaller for most time intervals than those produced by the primitive velocity-pressure variable method and by the standard pressure gradient method. Also it is found that the modified and standard pressure gradient methods can be applied to the unsteady circular cavity flow at a moderate Reynolds number of at least up to 200.     

Interface‐fitted moving mesh method for axisymmetric two‐phase flow in microchannels

A boundary‐fitted moving mesh scheme is presented for the simulation of two‐phase flow in two‐dimensional and axisymmetric geometries. The incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations are solved using the finite element method, and the mini element is used to satisfy the inf‐sup condition. The interface between the phases is represented explicitly by an interface adapted mesh, thus allowing a sharp transition of the fluid properties. Surface tension is modelled as a volume force and is discretized in a consistent manner, thus allowing to obtain exact equilibrium (up to rounding errors) with the pressure gradient. This is demonstrated for a spherical droplet moving in a constant flow field. The curvature of the interface, required for the surface tension term, is efficiently computed with simple but very accurate geometric formulas. An adaptive moving mesh technique, where smoothing mesh velocities and remeshing are used to preserve the mesh quality, is developed and presented. Mesh refinement strategies, allowing tailoring of the refinement of the computational mesh, are also discussed. Accuracy and robustness of the present method are demonstrated on several validation test cases. The method is developed with the prospect of being applied to microfluidic flows and the simulation of microchannel evaporators used for electronics cooling. Therefore, the simulation results for the flow of a bubble in a microchannel are presented and compared to experimental data.     

不可压缩机翼绕流的有限谱法计算

结合有限谱QUICK格式求解不可压缩粘性流问题。这一格式用于模拟不同攻角下的NACA1200机翼绕流问题。利用体积力,提出了将流场速度从0加速到来流速度的方法。区别于传统的压力梯度为零的边界条件,推导出一个更精确的压力边界条件。为使速度散度保持为零,在泊松方程中给速度散度一个特殊的处理。这一成果说明了有限谱法不但具有很高的精度,而且能灵活地和其他格式一起构造出新的格式,从而成功地应用到复杂流场不可压缩流动的数值计算中。     

Improved CVP scheme for laminar incompressible flows

An improved scheme of the continuity vorticity pressure (CVP) variational equations method is presented. The changes from the original version of the CVP method concern the velocity and the pressure correction equations that are used in the solution procedure and the topology of the grid where the method is applied. The improved CVP scheme is faster, simpler and more stable than the original version of the method. The efficiency and the accuracy of the new scheme are tested and validated through comparison of predictions and of computational time, with numerical results obtained with the SIMPLE method. Moreover, we present extensive comparisons of the results of the improved CVP scheme with numerical and experimental data from various researchers that show excellent agreement for a wide range of benchmark 2D and 3D laminar internal flow problems such as flow over a backward facing step, flow in square, circular and elliptical curved ducts and pulsating flow. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unsteady shrinking sheet with mass transfer in a rotating fluid

In this paper, the problem of unsteady flow induced by a shrinking sheet with mass transfer in a rotating fluid is studied. The transformed boundary layer equations are solved numerically by an implicit finite‐difference scheme known as the Keller‐box method. The influence of rotation, unsteadiness and mass suction parameters on the reduced skin friction coefficients f″(0) and g′(0), as well as the lateral velocity and velocity profiles are presented and discussed in detail. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite difference scheme for the solution of fluid flow problems on non‐staggered grids

A new finite difference methodology is developed for the solution of computational fluid dynamics problems that do not require the use of staggered grid systems. Previous successful and robust non‐staggered methods, which used primitive variables and mass conservation in order to solve the pressure field, either interpolate cell‐face velocities or interpolate the pressure gradients in a special way, usually with an upwind‐bias to avoid the problem of odd–even coupling between the velocity and pressure fields. The new methodology presented does not detail a ‘special interpolation procedure for a primitive variable’, however, it manages to avoid the problem of odd–even coupling. The odd–even coupling is avoided by applying fourth‐order dissipation to the pressure field. It is shown that this approach can be regarded as a modified Rhie and Chow scheme. The method is implemented using a SIMPLE‐type algorithm and is applied to two test problems: laminar flow over a backward‐facing step and laminar flow in a square cavity with a driven lid. Good agreement is obtained between the numerical solutions and the corresponding benchmark solutions. The pressure dissipation term was found to successfully suppress wiggles in the pressure field. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On estimating pressure build-up in severely accelerated,shocked flow

A new approach to the calculation of the high pressures characterizing the flow field in front of a piston undergoing severe acceleration over the short term is presented. In contrast with previous approaches where the computational domain is altered but which stop short of transforming velocities, here the problem is solved in an accelerating non-Euclidean co-ordinate system where the piston is stationary. The method is applied to a study of the problem of premature sabot separation. Through use of Harten's second-order-accurate TVD scheme, flow simulations are performed for both 1D and 3D axisymmetric geometries. The simple 1D model gives pressure profiles surprisingly close to those of the more physical 3D model.