An immersed boundary method for simulation of inviscid compressible flows

In this paper, an immersed boundary method for simulating inviscid compressible flows governed by Euler equations is presented. All the mesh points are classified as interior computed points, immersed boundary points (interior points closest to the solid boundary), and exterior points that are blanked out of computation. The flow variables at an immersed boundary point are determined via the approximate form of solution in the direction normal to the wall boundary. The normal velocity is evaluated by applying the no‐penetration boundary condition, and therefore, the influence of solid wall in the inviscid flow is taken into account. The pressure is computed with the local simplified momentum equation, and the density and the tangential velocity are evaluated by using the constant‐entropy relation and the constant‐total‐enthalpy relation, respectively. With a local coordinate system, the present method has been extended easily to the three‐dimensional case. The present work is the first endeavor to extend the idea of hybrid Cartesian/immersed boundary approach to compressible inviscid flows. The tedious task of handling multi‐valued points can be eliminated, and the overshoot resulting from the extrapolation for the evaluation of flow variables at exterior points can also be avoided. In order to validate the present method, inviscid compressible flows over fixed and moving bodies have been simulated. All the obtained numerical results show good agreement with available data in the literature. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immersed boundary solver for inviscid compressible flows

In this paper, a simple and efficient immersed boundary (IB) method is developed for the numerical simulation of inviscid compressible Euler equations. We propose a method based on coordinate transformation to calculate the unknowns of ghost points. In the present study, the body‐grid intercept points are used to build a complete bilinear (2‐D)/trilinear (3‐D) interpolation. A third‐order weighted essentially nonoscillation scheme with a new reference smoothness indicator is proposed to improve the accuracy at the extrema and discontinuity region. The dynamic blocked structured adaptive mesh is used to enhance the computational efficiency. The parallel computation with loading balance is applied to save the computational cost for 3‐D problems. Numerical tests show that the present method has second‐order overall spatial accuracy. The double Mach reflection test indicates that the present IB method gives almost identical solution as that of the boundary‐fitted method. The accuracy of the solver is further validated by subsonic and transonic flow past NACA2012 airfoil. Finally, the present IB method with adaptive mesh is validated by simulation of transonic flow past 3‐D ONERA M6 Wing. Global agreement with experimental and other numerical results are obtained.     

A ghost-cell immersed boundary method for large-eddy simulations of compressible turbulent flows

A methodology to perform a ghost-cell-based immersed boundary method (GCIBM) is presented for simulating compressible turbulent flows around complex geometries. In this method, the boundary condition on the immersed boundary is enforced through the use of ‘ghost cells’ that are located inside the solid body. The computations of variables on these ghost cells are achieved using linear interpolation schemes. The validity and applicability of the proposed method is verified using a three-dimensional (3D) flow over a circular cylinder, and a large-eddy simulation of fully developed 3D turbulent flow in a channel with a wavy surface. The results agree well with the previous numerical and experimental results, given that the grid resolution is reasonably fine. To demonstrate the capability of the method for higher Mach numbers, supersonic turbulent flow over a circular cylinder is presented. While more work still needs to be done to demonstrate higher robustness and accuracy, the present work provides interesting insights using the GCIBM for the compressible flows.     

High-order ghost-point immersed boundary method for viscous compressible flows based on summation-by-parts operators

A high-order immersed boundary method is devised for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations by employing high-order summation-by-parts difference operators. The immersed boundaries are treated as sharp interfaces by enforcing the solid wall boundary conditions via flow variables at ghost points. Two different interpolation schemes are tested to compute values at the ghost points and a hybrid treatment is used. The first method provides the bilinearly interpolated flow variables at the image points of the corresponding ghost points and the second method applies the boundary condition at the immersed boundary by using the weighted least squares method with high-order polynomials. The approach is verified and validated for compressible flow past a circular cylinder at moderate Reynolds numbers. The tonal sound generated by vortex shedding from a circular cylinder is also investigated. In order to demonstrate the capability of the solver to handle complex geometries in practical cases, flow in a cross-section of a human upper airway is simulated.     

A diffuse-interface immersed boundary method for simulation of compressible viscous flows with stationary and moving boundaries

In this paper, a diffuse-interface immersed boundary method (IBM) is proposed for simulation of compressible viscous flows with stationary and moving boundaries. In the method, the solution of flow field and the implementation of boundary conditions are decoupled into two steps by applying the fractional step technique, ie, the predictor step and the corrector step. Firstly, in the predictor step, the intermediate flow field is resolved by a recently developed gas kinetic flux solver (GKFS) without consideration of the solid boundary. The GKFS is a finite volume approach that solves the Navier-Stokes equations for the flow variables at cell centers. In GKFS, the inviscid and viscous fluxes are evaluated as a single entity by reconstructing the local solution of continuous Boltzmann equation. Secondly, in the corrector step, the intermediate flow field is corrected by the present diffuse-interface IBM. During this process, the velocity field is firstly corrected by the implicit boundary condition–enforced IBM so that the no-slip boundary condition can be accurately satisfied. After that, the density correction is made by an iterative approach with the help of the continuity equation. Finally, the correction of the temperature field is made in the same way as that of the velocity field. Good agreements between the present simulations and the reference data in literature demonstrate the reliability of the proposed method.     

An improved ghost‐cell immersed boundary method for compressible flow simulations

This study presents an improved ghost‐cell immersed boundary approach to represent a solid body in compressible flow simulations. In contrast to the commonly used approaches, in the present work, ghost cells are mirrored through the boundary described using a level‐set method to farther image points, incorporating a higher‐order extra/interpolation scheme for the ghost‐cell values. A sensor is introduced to deal with image points near the discontinuities in the flow field. Adaptive mesh refinement is used to improve the representation of the geometry efficiently in the Cartesian grid system. The improved ghost‐cell method is validated against four test cases: (a) double Mach reflections on a ramp, (b) smooth Prandtl–Meyer expansion flows, (c) supersonic flows in a wind tunnel with a forward‐facing step, and (d) supersonic flows over a circular cylinder. It is demonstrated that the improved ghost‐cell method can reach the accuracy of second order in L¹ norm and higher than first order in L^∞ norm. Direct comparisons against the cut‐cell method demonstrate that the improved ghost‐cell method is almost equally accurate with better efficiency for boundary representation in high‐fidelity compressible flow simulations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stabilized finite element formulation for high‐speed inviscid compressible flows using finite calculus

This paper aims at the development of a new stabilization formulation based on the finite calculus (FIC) scheme for solving the Euler equations using the Galerkin FEM on unstructured triangular grids. The FIC method is based on expressing the balance of fluxes in a space–time domain of finite size. It is used to prevent the creation of instabilities typically present in numerical solutions due to the high convective terms and sharp gradients. Two stabilization terms, respectively called streamline term and transverse term, are added via the FIC formulation to the original conservative equations in the space–time domain. An explicit fourth‐order Runge–Kutta scheme is implemented to advance the solution in time. The presented numerical test examples for inviscid flows prove the ability of the proposed stabilization technique for providing appropriate solutions especially near shock waves. Although the derived methodology delivers precise results with a nearly coarse mesh, a mesh refinement technique is coupled to the solution process for obtaining a suitable mesh particularly in the high‐gradient zones. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jump-reduced immersed boundary method for compressible flow

The main challenge of the immersed boundary approach is the proper enforcement of boundary conditions on the body interface without any spurious oscillations, which are induced by the nongrid-conforming boundary configuration. In this study, a new sharp interface ghost-cell immersed boundary method (IBM) is proposed for obtaining solutions near the immersed boundary with a high order of accuracy. The main idea is “jump-reduction” instead of jump-correction across the boundary interface by combining the ghost-cell method with the flow reconstruction method. In the proposed IBM, the unknown values at the three points, that is, boundary points, ghost cell, and flow field reconstruction point are solved simultaneously using equations formulated by the moving least-squares interpolation method. It is a hybrid of ghost-cell and flow reconstruction methods, correlated with interface values, which result in a reduced jump-discontinuity. In addition, a discontinuity-distinguishing algorithm is introduced so that the low-order method is applied only to the discontinuous or non smooth region, while the current high-order method is applied elsewhere. Reduced jump-discontinuity of the proposed IBM has been verified in both subsonic and supersonic flow using fundamental benchmark problems. We observed that the reduced jump-discontinuity does not hamper the mass conservation and shows even better conservation property than conventional methods due to the nonoscillatory performance in smooth regions. The numerical results further confirm the ability of the proposed IBM to solve complex flow physics with high-order accuracy and improved stability.     

A discontinuous Galerkin‐based sharp‐interface method to simulate three‐dimensional compressible two‐phase flow

A numerical method for the simulation of compressible two‐phase flows is presented in this paper. The sharp‐interface approach consists of several components: a discontinuous Galerkin solver for compressible fluid flow, a level‐set tracking algorithm to follow the movement of the interface and a coupling of both by a ghost‐fluid approach with use of a local Riemann solver at the interface. There are several novel techniques used: the discontinuous Galerkin scheme allows locally a subcell resolution to enhance the interface resolution and an interior finite volume Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) approximation at the interface. The level‐set equation is solved by the same discontinuous Galerkin scheme. To obtain a very good approximation of the interface curvature, the accuracy of the level‐set field is improved and smoothed by an additional P_NP_M‐reconstruction. The capabilities of the method for the simulation of compressible two‐phase flow are demonstrated for a droplet at equilibrium, an oscillating ellipsoidal droplet, and a shock‐droplet interaction problem at Mach 3. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A local domain‐free discretization method to simulate three‐dimensional compressible inviscid flows

In this paper, the domain‐free discretization method (DFD) is extended to simulate the three‐dimensional compressible inviscid flows governed by Euler equations. The discretization strategy of DFD is that the discrete form of governing equations at an interior point may involve some points outside the solution domain. The functional values at the exterior‐dependent points are updated at each time step by extrapolation along the wall normal direction in conjunction with the wall boundary conditions and the simplified momentum equation in the vicinity of the wall. Spatial discretization is achieved with the help of the finite element Galerkin approximation. The concept of ‘osculating plane’ is adopted, with which the local DFD can be easily implemented for the three‐dimensional case. Geometry‐adaptive tetrahedral mesh is employed for three‐dimensional calculations. Finally, we validate the DFD method for three‐dimensional compressible inviscid flow simulations by computing transonic flows over the ONERA M6 wing. Comparison with the reference experimental data and numerical results on boundary‐conforming grid was displayed and the results show that the present DFD results compare very well with the reference data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immersed discontinuous Galerkin method for compressible Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured meshes

We introduce an immersed high-order discontinuous Galerkin method for solving the compressible Navier-Stokes equations on non–boundary-fitted meshes. The flow equations are discretised with a mixed discontinuous Galerkin formulation and are advanced in time with an explicit time marching scheme. The discretisation meshes may contain simplicial (triangular or tetrahedral) elements of different sizes and need not be structured. On the discretisation mesh, the fluid domain boundary is represented with an implicit signed distance function. The cut-elements partially covered by the solid domain are integrated after tessellation with the marching triangle or tetrahedra algorithms. Two alternative techniques are introduced to overcome the excessive stable time step restrictions imposed by cut-elements. In the first approach, the cut-basis functions are replaced with the extrapolated basis functions from the nearest largest element. In the second approach, the cut-basis functions are simply scaled proportionally to the fraction of the cut-element covered by the solid. To achieve high-order accuracy, additional nodes are introduced on the element faces abutting the solid boundary. Subsequently, the faces are curved by projecting the introduced nodes to the boundary. The proposed approach is verified and validated with several two- and three-dimensional subsonic and hypersonic low Reynolds number flow applications, including the flow over a cylinder, a space capsule, and an aerospace vehicle.     

Moving least squares reconstruction for sharp interface immersed boundary methods

We propose a new approach for reconstructing velocity boundary conditions in sharp-inerface immersed boundary (IB) methods based on the moving least squares (MLS) interpolation method. The MLS is employed to not only reconstruct velocity boundary conditions but also to calculate the pressure and velocity gradients in the vicinity of the immersed body, which are required in fluid structure interaction problems to obtain the force exerted by the fluid on the structure. To extend the method to arbitrarily complex geometries with nonconvex shaped boundaries, the visibility method is combined with the MLS method. The performance of the proposed curvilinear IB MLS (CURVIB-MLS) is demonstrated by systematic grid-refinement studies for two- and three-dimensional tests and compared with the standard CURVIB method employing standard wall-normal interpolation for reconstructing boundary conditions. The test problems are flow in a lid-driven cavity with a sphere, uniform flow over a sphere, flow on a NACA0018 airfoil at incidence, and vortex-induced vibration of an elastically-mounted cylinder. We show that the CURVIB-MLS formulation yields a method that is easier to implement in complex geometries and exhibits higher accuracy and rate of convergence relative to the standard CURVIB method. The MLS approach is also shown to dramatically improve the accuracy of calculating the pressure and viscous forces imparted by the flow on the body and improve the overall accuracy of FSI simulations. Finally, the CURVIB-MLS approach is able to qualitatively capture on relatively coarse grids important features of complex separated flows that the standard CURVIB method is able to capture only on finer grids.     

An immersed boundary/wall modeling method for RANS simulation of compressible turbulent flows

In this paper, an immersed boundary (IB) method is developed to simulate compressible turbulent flows governed by the Reynolds‐averaged Navier‐Stokes equations. The flow variables at the IB nodes (interior nodes in the immediate vicinity of the solid wall) are evaluated via linear interpolation in the normal direction to close the discrete form of the governing equations. An adaptive wall function and a 2‐layer wall model are introduced to reduce the near‐wall mesh density required by the high resolution of the turbulent boundary layers. The wall shear stress modified by the wall modeling technique and the no‐penetration condition are enforced to evaluate the velocity at an IB node. The pressure and temperature at an IB node are obtained via the local simplified momentum equation and the Crocco‐Busemann relation, respectively. The SST k ? ω and S‐A turbulence models are adopted in the framework of the present IB approach. For the Shear‐Stress Transport (SST) k ? ω model, analytical solutions in near‐wall region are utilized to enforce the boundary conditions of the turbulence equations and evaluate the turbulence variables at an IB node. For the S‐A model, the turbulence variable at an IB node is calculated by using the near‐wall profile of the eddy viscosity. In order to validate the present IB approach, numerical experiments for compressible turbulent flows over stationary and moving bodies have been performed. The predictions show good agreements with the referenced experimental data and numerical results.     

A grid‐free upwind relaxation scheme for inviscid compressible flows

A new grid‐free upwind relaxation scheme for simulating inviscid compressible flows is presented in this paper. The non‐linear conservation equations are converted to linear convection equations with non‐linear source terms by using a relaxation system and its interpretation as a discrete Boltzmann equation. A splitting method is used to separate the convection and relaxation parts. Least squares upwinding is used for discretizing the convection equations, thus developing a grid‐free scheme which can operate on any arbitrary distribution of points. The scheme is grid free in the sense that it works on any arbitrary distribution of points and it does not require any topological information like elements, faces, edges, etc. This method is tested on some standard test cases. To explore the power of the grid‐free scheme, solution‐based adaptation of points is done and the results are presented, which demonstrate the efficiency of the new grid‐free scheme. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Constrained moving least‐squares immersed boundary method for fluid‐structure interaction analysis

A numerical method is presented for the analysis of interactions of inviscid and compressible flows with arbitrarily shaped stationary or moving rigid solids. The fluid equations are solved on a fixed rectangular Cartesian grid by using a higher‐order finite difference method based on the fifth‐order WENO scheme. A constrained moving least‐squares sharp interface method is proposed to enforce the Neumann‐type boundary conditions on the fluid‐solid interface by using a penalty term, while the Dirichlet boundary conditions are directly enforced. The solution of the fluid flow and the solid motion equations is advanced in time by staggerly using, respectively, the third‐order Runge‐Kutta and the implicit Newmark integration schemes. The stability and the robustness of the proposed method have been demonstrated by analyzing 5 challenging problems. For these problems, the numerical results have been found to agree well with their analytical and numerical solutions available in the literature. Effects of the support domain size and values assigned to the penalty parameter on the stability and the accuracy of the present method are also discussed.     

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.     

Volume preserving immersed boundary methods for two‐phase fluid flows

In this article, we propose a simple area‐preserving correction scheme for two‐phase immiscible incompressible flows with an immersed boundary method (IBM). The IBM was originally developed to model blood flow in the heart and has been widely applied to biofluid dynamics problems with complex geometries and immersed elastic membranes. The main idea of the IBM is to use a regular Eulerian computational grid for the fluid mechanics along with a Lagrangian representation of the immersed boundary. Using the discrete Dirac delta function and the indicator function, we can include the surface tension force, variable viscosity and mass density, and gravitational force effects. The principal advantage of the IBM for two‐phase fluid flows is its inherent accuracy due in part to its ability to use a large number of interfacial marker points on the interface. However, because the interface between two fluids is moved in a discrete manner, this can result in a lack of volume conservation. The idea of an area preserving correction scheme is to correct the interface location normally to the interface so that the area remains constant. Various numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed conservative IBM for two‐phase fluid flows. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐resolution scheme for compressible multicomponent flows with shock waves

A simple methodology for a high‐resolution scheme to be applied to compressible multicomponent flows with shock waves is investigated. The method is intended for use with direct numerical simulation or large eddy simulation of compressible multicomponent flows. The method dynamically adds non‐linear artificial diffusivity locally in space to capture different types of discontinuities such as a shock wave, contact surface or material interface while a high‐order compact differencing scheme resolves a broad range of scales in flows. The method is successfully applied to several one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional compressible multicomponent flow problems with shock waves. The results are in good agreement with experiments and earlier computations qualitatively and quantitatively. The method captures unsteady shock and material discontinuities without significant spurious oscillations if initial start‐up errors are properly avoided. Comparisons between the present numerical scheme and high‐order weighted essentially non‐oscillatory (WENO) schemes illustrate the advantage of the present method for resolving a broad range of scales of turbulence while capturing shock waves and material interfaces. Also the present method is expected to require less computational cost than popular high‐order upwind‐biased schemes such as WENO schemes. The mass conservation for each species is satisfied due to the strong conservation form of governing equations employed in the method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A sharp interface Cartesian grid method for viscous simulation of shocked particle-laden flows

A Cartesian grid-based sharp interface method is presented for viscous simulations of shocked particle-laden flows. The moving solid–fluid interfaces are represented using level sets. A moving least-squares reconstruction is developed to apply the no-slip boundary condition at solid–fluid interfaces and to supply viscous stresses to the fluid. The algorithms developed in this paper are benchmarked against similarity solutions for the boundary layer over a fixed flat plate and against numerical solutions for moving interface problems such as shock-induced lift-off of a cylinder in a channel. The framework is extended to 3D and applied to calculate low Reynolds number steady supersonic flow over a sphere. Viscous simulation of the interaction of a particle cloud with an incident planar shock is demonstrated; the average drag on the particles and the vorticity field in the cloud are compared to the inviscid case to elucidate the effects of viscosity on momentum transfer between the particle and fluid phases. The methods developed will be useful for obtaining accurate momentum and heat transfer closure models for macro-scale shocked particulate flow applications such as blast waves and dust explosions.     

A high‐order finite difference method for numerical simulations of supersonic turbulent flows

This paper describes a new class of three‐dimensional finite difference schemes for high‐speed turbulent flows in complex geometries based on the high‐order monotonicity‐preserving (MP) method. Simulations conducted for various 1D, 2D, and 3D problems indicate that the new high‐order MP schemes can preserve sharp changes in the flow variables without spurious oscillations and are able to capture the turbulence at the smallest computed scales. Our results also indicate that the MP method has less numerical dissipation and faster grid convergence than the weighted essentially non‐oscillatory method. However, both of these methods are computationally more demanding than the COMP method and are only used for the inviscid fluxes. To reduce the computational cost for reacting flows, the scalar equations are solved by the COMP method, which is shown to yield similar results to those obtained by the MP in supersonic turbulent flows with strong shock waves. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.