Efficient Large-eddy Simulations of Low Mach Number Flows Using Preconditioning and Multigrid

In the present paper, an implicit time accurate approach combined with multigrid, preconditioning and residual smoothing is used for the large-eddy simulation (LES) of low Mach number flow. In general, due to the restriction imposed on the time step by the physics of the flow, the advantage of an implicit method over an explicit one for LES is not obvious. It is shown that for the test cases considered in this paper, the present approach allows an efficiency gain of a factor 4–7 compared to the use of a purely explicit approach. The efficiency varies according to the test case, grid clustering, physical time step and requested residual drop. Numerical difficulties are catalogued and mitigatory procedures are introduced. Several problems with available experimental and DNS data are employed to verify the efficiency of the method.     

On unconditionally positive implicit time integration for the DG scheme applied to shallow water flows

We present a new unconditionally positivity‐preserving (PP) implicit time integration method for the DG scheme applied to shallow water flows. This novel time discretization enhances the currently used PP DG schemes, because in the majority of previous work, explicit time stepping is implemented to deal with wetting and drying. However, for explicit time integration, linear stability requires very small time steps. Especially for locally refined grids, the stiff system resulting from space discretization makes implicit or partially implicit time stepping absolutely necessary. As implicit schemes require a lot of computational time solving large systems of nonlinear equations, a much larger time step is necessary to beat explicit time stepping in terms of CPU time. Unfortunately, the current PP implicit schemes are subject to time step restrictions due to a so‐called strong stability preserving constraint. In this work, we hence give a novel approach to positivity preservation including its theoretical background. The new technique is based on the so‐called Patankar trick and guarantees non‐negativity of the water height for any time step size while still preserving conservativity. In the DG context, we prove consistency of the discretization as well as a truncation error of the third order away from the wet–dry transition. Because of the proposed modification, the implicit scheme can take full advantage of larger time steps and is able to beat explicit time stepping in terms of CPU time. The performance and accuracy of this new method are studied for several classical test cases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient implicit algorithm for the equations of 2-D viscous compressible flow: application to shock-boundary layer interaction

A fully implicit algorithm has been developed to time integrate the equations of 2-D compressible viscous flow. The algorithm was constructed so as to optimize computational efficiency. The time-consuming block matrix inversions usually associated with implicit algorithms have been reduced to the trivial non-iterative inversion of four sets of scalar bidiagonal matrices. Thus, the algorithm requires virtually no more computer storage than an explicit algorithm. The efficient structure of the implicit algorithm is reflected in comparative timings which slow that it requires only a factor of two more computer time per point per time step than a typical explicit algorithm. Therefore, the algorithm allows more economical solution of given flows than existing explicit methods and also allows more difficult problems to be attempted using available computer resources. Application of the algorithm to the problem of shock-boundary layer interaction produces results consistent with both experimental measurements and other calculations.     

Efficient and robust constitutive integrators for single-crystal plasticity modeling

Small-scale deformation phenomena such as subgrain formation, development of texture, and grain boundary sliding require simulations with a high degree of spatial resolution. When we consider finite-element simulation of metal deformation, this equates to thousands or hundreds of thousands of finite elements. Simulations of the dynamic deformations of metal samples require elastic–plastic constitutive updates of the material behavior to be performed over a small time step between updates, as dictated by the Courant condition. Further, numerical integration of physically-based equations is inherently sensitive to the step in time taken; they return different predictions as the time step is reduced, eventually approaching a stationary solution. Depending on the deformation conditions, this converged time step becomes short (10⁻⁹ s or less). If an implicit constitutive update is applied to this class of simulation, the benefit of the implicit update (i.e., the ability to evaluate over a relatively large time step) is negated, and the integration is prohibitively slow. The present work recasts an implicit update algorithm into an explicit form, for which each update step is five to six times faster, and the compute time required for a plastic update approaches that needed for a fully-elastic update. For dynamic loading conditions, the explicit model is found to perform an entire simulation up to 50 times faster than the implicit model. The performance of the explicit model is enhanced by adding a subcycling algorithm to the explicit model, by which the maximum time step between constitutive updates is increased an order of magnitude. These model improvements do not significantly change the predictions of the model from the implicit form, and provide overall computation times significantly faster than the implicit form over finite-element meshes. These modifications are also applied to polycrystals via Taylor averaging, where we also see improved model performance.     

An iterative stabilized fractional step algorithm for numerical solution of incompressible N–S equations

Stabilized fractional step algorithm has been widely employed for numerical solution of incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. However, smaller time step sizes are required to use for existing explicit and semi‐implicit versions of the algorithm due to their fully or partially explicit nature particularly for highly viscous flow problems. The purpose of this paper is to present two modified versions of the fractional step algorithm using characteristic based split and Taylor–Galerkin like based split. The proposed modified versions of the algorithm are based on introducing an iterative procedure into the algorithm and allow much larger time step sizes than those required to the preceding ones. A numerical study of stability at acceptable convergence rate and accuracy as well as capability in circumventing the restriction imposed by the LBB condition for the proposed iterative versions of the algorithm is carried out with the plane Poisseuille flow problem under different Reynolds numbers ranging from low to high viscosities. Numerical experiments in the plane Poisseuille flow and the lid‐driven cavity flow problems demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed versions of the algorithm, which are further applied to numerical simulation of the polymer injection moulding process. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of time integration methods in an unsteady low‐Reynolds‐number flow

This paper describes three different time integration methods for unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Explicit Euler and fractional‐step Adams–Bashford methods are compared with an implicit three‐level method based on a steady‐state SIMPLE method. The implicit solver employs a dual time stepping and an iteration within the time step. The spatial discretization is based on a co‐located finite‐volume technique. The influence of the convergence limits and the time‐step size on the accuracy of the predictions are studied. The efficiency of the different solvers is compared in a vortex‐shedding flow over a cylinder in the Reynolds number range of 100–1600. A high‐Reynolds‐number flow over a biconvex airfoil profile is also computed. The computations are performed in two dimensions. At the low‐Reynolds‐number range the explicit methods appear to be faster by a factor from 5 to 10. In the high‐Reynolds‐number case, the explicit Adams–Bashford method and the implicit method appear to be approximately equally fast while yielding similar results. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysis of several subcycling schemes in partitioned simulations of a strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations are used extensively to calculate the vibration of structures subjected to an internal or external flow. In the case of partitioned FSI simulations, separate flow and structure solvers are used, which requires some kind of coupling between both. The time step in both solvers is typically taken the same, but this unnecessarily leads to long calculation times when the time step is small due to stability reasons in one of the two solvers. Subcycling, the procedure where the time step of one solver is chosen smaller than the time step used in the other solver, may reduce the computational cost of the FSI simulation. The subcycling procedure can be either explicit or implicit, the latter implying the use of coupling iterations in each time step. Contrary to explicit subcycling, no stability analyses of implicit subcycling schemes are found in the literature. In this paper, the temporal stability of the implicit subcycling procedure is investigated. The one-dimensional flow in an elastic cylindrical tube is studied analytically. The results of this analysis are subsequently compared to a partitioned two-dimensional axisymmetric FSI calculation with implicit coupling between the flow and structure solvers.     

A new implicit surface tension implementation for interfacial flows

A new implementation of surface tension effects in interfacial flow codes is proposed which is both fully implicit in space, that is the interface never has to be reconstructed, and also semi‐implicit in time, with semi‐implicit referring to the time integration of the surface tension forces. The main idea is to combine two previously separate techniques to yield a new expression for the capillary forces. The first is the continuum surface force (CSF) method, which is used to regularize the discontinuous surface tension force term. The regularization can be elegantly implemented with the use of distance functions, which makes the level set method a suitable choice for the interface‐tracking algorithm. The second is to use a finite element discretization together with the Laplace–Beltrami operator, which enables simple reformulation of the surface tension term into its semi‐implicit equivalent. The performance of the new method is benchmarked against standard explicit methods, where it is shown that the new method is significantly more robust for the chosen test problems when the time steps exceed the numerical capillary time step restriction. Some improvements are also found in the average number of nonlinear iterations and linear multigrid steps taken while solving the momentum equations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reduced augmented Lagrangian bi-conjugate gradient method for impact-contact problems

To avoid the numerical oscillation of the penalty method and non-compatibility with explicit operators of conventional Lagrange multiplier methods used in transient contact problems to enforce surface contact conditions, a new approach to enforcing surface contact constraints for the transient nonlinear finite element problems, referred to as “the reduced augmented Lagrangian bi-conjugate gradient method (ALCG)”, is developed in this paper. Based on the nonlinear constrained optimization theory and is compatible with the explicit time integration scheme, this approach can also be used in implicit scheme naturally. The new surface contact constraint method presented has significant advantages over the widely adopted penalty function methods and the conventional Lagrangian multiplier methods. The surface contact constraints are satisfied more accurately for each step by the algorithm, so the oscillation of numerical solution for the explicit scheme is depressed. Through the development of new iteration strategy for solving nonlinear equations, ALCG method improves the computational efficiency greatly. Project supported by State Education Commission Doctoral Foundation and Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province.     

High‐order implicit Runge–Kutta time integrators for fluid‐structure interactions

This paper presents an approach to develop high‐order, temporally accurate, finite element approximations of fluid‐structure interaction (FSI) problems. The proposed numerical method uses an implicit monolithic formulation in which the same implicit Runge–Kutta (IRK) temporal integrator is used for the incompressible flow, the structural equations undergoing large displacements, and the coupling terms at the fluid‐solid interface. In this context of stiff interaction problems, the fully implicit one‐step approach presented is an original alternative to traditional multistep or explicit one‐step finite element approaches. The numerical scheme takes advantage of an arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian formulation of the equations designed to satisfy the geometric conservation law and to guarantee that the high‐order temporal accuracy of the IRK time integrators observed on fixed meshes is preserved on arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian deforming meshes. A thorough review of the literature reveals that in most previous works, high‐order time accuracy (higher than second order) is seldom achieved for FSI problems. We present thorough time‐step refinement studies for a rigid oscillating‐airfoil on deforming meshes to confirm the time accuracy on the extracted aerodynamics reactions of IRK time integrators up to fifth order. Efficiency of the proposed approach is then tested on a stiff FSI problem of flow‐induced vibrations of a flexible strip. The time‐step refinement studies indicate the following: stability of the proposed approach is always observed even with large time step and spurious oscillations on the structure are avoided without added damping. While higher order IRK schemes require more memory than classical schemes (implicit Euler), they are faster for a given level of temporal accuracy in two dimensions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A three dimensional implicit immersed boundary method with application

Most algorithms of the immersed boundary method originated by Peskin are explicit when it comes to the computation of the elastic forces exerted by the immersed boundary to the fluid. A drawback of such an explicit approach is a severe restriction on the time step size for maintaining numerical stability. An implicit immersed boundary method in two dimensions using the lattice Boltzmann approach has been proposed. This paper reports an extension of the method to three dimensions and its application to simulation of a massive flexible sheet interacting with an incompressible viscous flow.     

Investigation and application of point implicit Runge–Kutta methods to inviscid flow problems

We derive and investigate point implicit Runge–Kutta methods to significantly improve the convergence rate to approximate steady‐state solutions of inviscid flows. It turns out that the point implicit Runge–Kutta can be interpreted as a preconditioned explicit Runge–Kutta method, where the preconditioner arises naturally as local derivative of the residual function. Moreover, many preconditioners suggested in the literature so far are identified as special case of our general ansatz. Conditions will be formulated such that explicit Runge–Kutta methods with local time stepping are equivalent to point implicit methods. In numerical examples, we will demonstrate the improved convergence rates. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High‐order semi‐implicit time‐integrators for a triangular discontinuous Galerkin oceanic shallow water model

We extend the explicit in time high‐order triangular discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method to semi‐implicit (SI) and then apply the algorithm to the two‐dimensional oceanic shallow water equations; we implement high‐order SI time‐integrators using the backward difference formulas from orders one to six. The reason for changing the time‐integration method from explicit to SI is that explicit methods require a very small time step in order to maintain stability, especially for high‐order DG methods. Changing the time‐integration method to SI allows one to circumvent the stability criterion due to the gravity waves, which for most shallow water applications are the fastest waves in the system (the exception being supercritical flow where the Froude number is greater than one). The challenge of constructing a SI method for a DG model is that the DG machinery requires not only the standard finite element‐type area integrals, but also the finite volume‐type boundary integrals as well. These boundary integrals pose the biggest challenge in a SI discretization because they require the construction of a Riemann solver that is the true linear representation of the nonlinear Riemann problem; if this condition is not satisfied then the resulting numerical method will not be consistent with the continuous equations. In this paper we couple the SI time‐integrators with the DG method while maintaining most of the usual attributes associated with DG methods such as: high‐order accuracy (in both space and time), parallel efficiency, excellent stability, and conservation. The only property lost is that of a compact communication stencil typical of time‐explicit DG methods; implicit methods will always require a much larger communication stencil. We apply the new high‐order SI DG method to the shallow water equations and show results for many standard test cases of oceanic interest such as: standing, Kelvin and Rossby soliton waves, and the Stommel problem. The results show that the new high‐order SI DG model, that has already been shown to yield exponentially convergent solutions in space for smooth problems, results in a more efficient model than its explicit counterpart. Furthermore, for those problems where the spatial resolution is sufficiently high compared with the length scales of the flow, the capacity to use high‐order (HO) time‐integrators is a necessary complement to the employment of HO space discretizations, since the total numerical error would be otherwise dominated by the time discretization error. In fact, in the limit of increasing spatial resolution, it makes little sense to use HO spatial discretizations coupled with low‐order time discretizations. Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the efficiency of semi‐implicit and semi‐Lagrangian spectral methods for the calculation of incompressible flows

Classical semi‐implicit backward Euler/Adams–Bashforth time discretizations of the Navier–Stokes equations induce, for high‐Reynolds number flows, severe restrictions on the time step. Such restrictions can be relaxed by using semi‐Lagrangian schemes essentially based on splitting the full problem into an explicit transport step and an implicit diffusion step. In comparison with the standard characteristics method, the semi‐Lagrangian method has the advantage of being much less CPU time consuming where spectral methods are concerned. This paper is devoted to the comparison of the ‘semi‐implicit’ and ‘semi‐Lagrangian’ approaches, in terms of stability, accuracy and computational efficiency. Numerical results on the advection equation, Burger's equation and finally two‐ and three‐dimensional Navier–Stokes equations, using spectral elements or a collocation method, are provided. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implementation and performance of the time integration of a 3D transport model

The total solution of a three-dimensional model for computing the transport of salinity, pollutants, suspended material (such as sediment or mud), etc. in shallow seas involves many aspects, each of which has to be treated in an optimal way in order to cope with the tremendous computational task involved. In this paper we focus on one of these aspects, i.e. on the time integration, and discuss two numerical solution methods. The emphasis in this paper is on the performance of the methods when implemented on a vector/parallel, shared memory computer such as a Cray-type machine. The first method is an explicit time integrator and can straightforwardly be vectorized and parallelized. Although a stabilizing technique has been applied to this method, it still suffers from a severe time step restriction. The second method is partly implicit, resulting in much better stability characteristics; however, as a consequence of the implicitness, it requires in each step the solution of a large number of tridiagonal systems. When implemented in a standard way, the recursive nature would prevent vectorization, resulting in a very long solution time. Following a suggestion of Golub and Van Loan, this part of the algorithm has been tuned for use on the Cray C98/4256. On the basis of a large-scale test problem, performance results will be presented for various implementations.     

Implementation and performance of the time integration of a 3D numerical transport model

The total solution of a three-dimensional model for computing the transport of salinity, pollutants, suspended material (such as sediment or mud), etc. in shallow seas involves many aspects, each of which has to be treated in an optimal way in order to cope with the tremendous computational task involved. In this paper we focus on one of these aspects, i.e. on the time integration, and discuss two numerical solution methods. The emphasis in this paper is on the performance of the methods when implemented on a vector/parallel, shared memory computer such as a Cray-type machine. The first method is an explicit time integrator and can straightforwardly be vectorized and parallelized. Although a stabilizing technique has been applied to this method, it still suffers from a severe time step restriction. The second method is partly implicit, resulting in much beter stability characteristics; however, as a consequence of the implicitness, it requires in each step the solution of a large number of tridiagonal systems. When implemented in a standard way, the recursive nature would prevent vectorization, resulting in a very long solution time. Following a suggestion of Golub and Van Loan, this part of the algorithm has been tuned for use on the Cray C98/4256. On the basis of a large-scale test problem, performance results will be presented for various implementations.     

Dynamic parallel Galerkin domain decomposition procedures with grid modification for parabolic equation

Dynamic parallel Galerkin domain decomposition procedures with grid modification for semi‐linear parabolic equation are given. These procedures allow one to apply different domain decompositions, different grids, and interpolation polynomials on the sub‐domains at different time levels when necessary, in order to capture time‐changing localized phenomena, such as, propagating fronts or moving layers. They rely on an implicit Galerkin method in the sub‐domains and simple explicit flux calculation on the inter‐domain boundaries by integral mean method to predict the inner‐boundary conditions. Thus, the parallelism can be achieved by these procedures. These procedures are conservative both in the sub‐domains and across inter‐boundaries. The explicit nature of the flux prediction induces a time step limitation that is necessary to preserve stability, but this constraint is less severe than that for a fully explicit method. Stability and convergence analysis in L²‐norm are derived for these procedures. The experimental results are presented to confirm the theoretical results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit time accurate simulation of unsteady flow

Implicit time integration was studied in the context of unsteady shock‐boundary layer interaction flow. With an explicit second‐order Runge–Kutta scheme, a reference solution to compare with the implicit second‐order Crank–Nicolson scheme was determined. The time step in the explicit scheme is restricted by both temporal accuracy as well as stability requirements, whereas in the A‐stable implicit scheme, the time step has to obey temporal resolution requirements and numerical convergence conditions. The non‐linear discrete equations for each time step are solved iteratively by adding a pseudo‐time derivative. The quasi‐Newton approach is adopted and the linear systems that arise are approximately solved with a symmetric block Gauss–Seidel solver. As a guiding principle for properly setting numerical time integration parameters that yield an efficient time accurate capturing of the solution, the global error caused by the temporal integration is compared with the error resulting from the spatial discretization. Focus is on the sensitivity of properties of the solution in relation to the time step. Numerical simulations show that the time step needed for acceptable accuracy can be considerably larger than the explicit stability time step; typical ratios range from 20 to 80. At large time steps, convergence problems that are closely related to a highly complex structure of the basins of attraction of the iterative method may occur. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

时间推进方法在叶轮机械内部流场计算中的进展

时间推进方法目前广泛应用于叶轮机械内部流场的计算,这种方法可以划分成显式时间推进方法和隐式时间推进方法．本文简要介绍了时间推进方法用于叶轮机械内部流场计算的起源及这种方法的优点和缺点,重点记述了国内外叶轮机界应用显式时间推进方法和隐式时间推进方法计算叶轮机内部流场的最新进展,并简要介绍世界上一些著名的研究机构开发的时间推进方法计算程序所采用的数值计算方法      

Accuracy and stability analysis of a second‐order time‐accurate loosely coupled partitioned algorithm for transient conjugate heat transfer problems

In this paper, a second‐order time‐accurate loosely coupled partitioned algorithm is presented for solving transient thermal coupling of solids and fluids, also referred to by conjugate heat transfer. The Crank–Nicolson scheme is used for time integration. The accuracy and stability of the loosely coupled solution algorithm are analyzed analytically. Based on the accuracy analysis, the design order of the time integration scheme is preserved by following a predictor (implicit)–corrector (explicit) approach. Hence, the need to perform an additional implicit solve (a subiteration) at each time step is avoided. The analytical stability analysis shows that by using the Crank–Nicolson scheme for time integration, the partitioned algorithm is unstable for large Fourier numbers, unlike the monolithic approach. Accordingly, using the stability analysis, a stability criterion is obtained for the Crank–Nicolson scheme that imposes restriction on Δt given the material properties and mesh spacings of the coupled domains. As the ratio of the thermal effusivities of the coupled domains reaches unity, the stability of the algorithm reduces. To demonstrate the applicability of the algorithm, a numerical example is considered (an unsteady conjugate natural convection in an enclosure). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.