A positive MUSCL-Hancock scheme for ideal magnetohydrodynamics

We present a highly robust second order accurate scheme for the Euler equations and the ideal MHD equations. The scheme is of predictor–corrector type, with a MUSCL scheme following as a special case. The crucial ingredients are an entropy stable approximate Riemann solver and a new spatial reconstruction that ensures positivity of mass density and pressure. For multidimensional MHD, a new discrete form of the Powell source terms is vital to ensure the stability properties. The numerical examples show that the scheme has superior stability compared to standard schemes, while maintaining accuracy. In particular, the method can handle very low values of pressure (i.e. low plasma β$\beta$ or high Mach numbers) and low mass densities.     

Positivity-preserving high order finite difference WENO schemes for compressible Euler equations

In Zhang and Shu (2010) [20], Zhang and Shu (2011) [21] and Zhang et al. (in press) [23], we constructed uniformly high order accurate discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and finite volume schemes which preserve positivity of density and pressure for the Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics. In this paper, we present an extension of this framework to construct positivity-preserving high order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) and weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) finite difference schemes for compressible Euler equations. General equations of state and source terms are also discussed. Numerical tests of the fifth order finite difference WENO scheme are reported to demonstrate the good behavior of such schemes.     

On the evolution equations for ideal magnetohydrodynamics in curved spacetime

We examine the problem of the construction of a first order symmetric hyperbolic evolution system for the Einstein-Maxwell-Euler system. Our analysis is based on a 1?+?3 tetrad formalism which makes use of the components of the Weyl tensor as one of the unknowns. In order to ensure the symmetric hyperbolicity of the evolution equations implied by the Bianchi identity, we introduce a tensor of rank 3 corresponding to the covariant derivative of the Faraday tensor. Our analysis includes the case of a perfect fluid with infinite conductivity (ideal magnetohydrodynamics) as a particular subcase.     

Adaptive mesh refinement based on high order finite difference WENO scheme for multi-scale simulations

In this paper, we propose a finite difference AMR-WENO method for hyperbolic conservation laws. The proposed method combines the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) framework  and  with the high order finite difference weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) method in space and the total variation diminishing (TVD) Runge–Kutta (RK) method in time (WENO-RK)  and  by a high order coupling. Our goal is to realize mesh adaptivity in the AMR framework, while maintaining very high (higher than second) order accuracy of the WENO-RK method in the finite difference setting. The high order coupling of AMR and WENO-RK is accomplished by high order prolongation in both space (WENO interpolation) and time (Hermite interpolation) from coarse to fine grid solutions, and at ghost points. The resulting AMR-WENO method is accurate, robust and efficient, due to the mesh adaptivity and very high order spatial and temporal accuracy. We have experimented with both the third and the fifth order AMR-WENO schemes. We demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed scheme using smooth test problems, and their quality and efficiency using several 1D and 2D nonlinear hyperbolic problems with very challenging initial conditions. The AMR solutions are observed to perform as well as, and in some cases even better than, the corresponding uniform fine grid solutions. We conclude that there is significant improvement of the fifth order AMR-WENO over the third order one, not only in accuracy for smooth problems, but also in its ability in resolving complicated solution structures, due to the very low numerical diffusion of high order schemes. In our work, we found that it is difficult to design a robust AMR-WENO scheme that is both conservative and high order (higher than second order), due to the mass inconsistency of coarse and fine grid solutions at the initial stage in a finite difference scheme. Resolving these issues as well as conducting comprehensive evaluation of computational efficiency constitute our future work.     

A high order ENO conservative Lagrangian type scheme for the compressible Euler equations

We develop a class of Lagrangian type schemes for solving the Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics both in the Cartesian and in the cylindrical coordinates. The schemes are based on high order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) reconstruction. They are conservative for the density, momentum and total energy, can maintain formal high order accuracy both in space and time and can achieve at least uniformly second-order accuracy with moving and distorted Lagrangian meshes, are essentially non-oscillatory, and have no parameters to be tuned for individual test cases. One and two-dimensional numerical examples in the Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates are presented to demonstrate the performance of the schemes in terms of accuracy, resolution for discontinuities, and non-oscillatory properties.     

A conservative high order semi-Lagrangian WENO method for the Vlasov equation

In this paper, we propose a novel Vlasov solver based on a semi-Lagrangian method which combines Strang splitting in time with high order WENO (weighted essentially non-oscillatory) reconstruction in space. A key insight in this work is that the spatial interpolation matrices, used in the reconstruction process of a semi-Lagrangian approach to linear hyperbolic equations, can be factored into right and left flux matrices. It is the factoring of the interpolation matrices which makes it possible to apply the WENO methodology in the reconstruction used in the semi-Lagrangian update. The spatial WENO reconstruction developed for this method is conservative and updates point values of the solution. While the third, fifth, seventh and ninth order reconstructions are presented in this paper, the scheme can be extended to arbitrarily high order. WENO reconstruction is able to achieve high order accuracy in smooth parts of the solution while being able to capture sharp interfaces without introducing oscillations. Moreover, the CFL time step restriction of a regular finite difference or finite volume WENO scheme is removed in a semi-Lagrangian framework, allowing for a cheaper and more flexible numerical realization. The quality of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying the approach to basic test problems, such as linear advection and rigid body rotation, and to classical plasma problems, such as Landau damping and the two-stream instability. Even though the method is only second order accurate in time, our numerical results suggest the use of high order reconstruction is advantageous when considering the Vlasov–Poisson system.     

A high order ENO conservative Lagrangian type scheme for the compressible Euler equations

We develop a class of Lagrangian type schemes for solving the Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics both in the Cartesian and in the cylindrical coordinates. The schemes are based on high order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) reconstruction. They are conservative for the density, momentum and total energy, can maintain formal high order accuracy both in space and time and can achieve at least uniformly second-order accuracy with moving and distorted Lagrangian meshes, are essentially non-oscillatory, and have no parameters to be tuned for individual test cases. One and two-dimensional numerical examples in the Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates are presented to demonstrate the performance of the schemes in terms of accuracy, resolution for discontinuities, and non-oscillatory properties.     

Divergence-free reconstruction of magnetic fields and WENO schemes for magnetohydrodynamics

In a pair of earlier papers the author showed the importance of divergence-free reconstruction in adaptive mesh refinement problems for magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and the importance of the same for designing robust second order schemes for MHD. Second order accurate divergence-free schemes for MHD have shown themselves to be very useful in several areas of science and engineering. However, certain computational MHD problems would be much benefited if the schemes had third and higher orders of accuracy. In this paper we show that the reconstruction of divergence-free vector fields can be carried out with better than second order accuracy. As a result, we design divergence-free weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes for MHD that have order of accuracy better than second. A multi-stage Runge–Kutta time integration is used to ensure that the temporal accuracy matches the spatial accuracy. While this is achieved quite simply up to third order in time, going beyond third order is most simply achieved by using the ADER-WENO schemes that are detailed in a companion paper. (ADER stands for Arbitrary Derivative Riemann Problem.) Accuracy analysis is carried out and it is shown that the schemes meet their design accuracy for smooth problems. Stringent tests are also presented showing that the schemes perform well on those tests.     

Self-adjusting,positivity preserving high order schemes for hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics

Several computational problems in science and engineering are stringent enough that maintaining positivity of density and pressure can become a problem. We build on the realization that positivity can be lost within a zone when reconstruction is carried out in the zone. We present a multidimensional, self-adjusting strategy for enforcing the positivity of density and pressure in hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The MHD case has never been addressed before, and the hydrodynamic case has never been presented in quite the same way as done here. The method examines the local flow to identify regions with strong shocks. The permitted range of densities and pressures is also obtained at each zone by examining neighboring zones. The range is expanded if the solution is free of strong shocks in order to accommodate higher order non-oscillatory reconstructions. The density and pressure are then brought into the permitted range. The method has also been extended to MHD. It is very efficient and should extend to discontinuous Galerkin methods as well as flows on unstructured meshes.Media player

A finite volume implicit time integration method for solving the equations of ideal magnetohydrodynamics for the hyperbolic divergence cleaning approach

A finite volume numerical technique is proposed to solve the compressible ideal MHD equations for steady and unsteady problems based on a quasi-Newton implicit time integration strategy. The solenoidal constraint is handled by a hyperbolic divergence cleaning approach allowing its satisfaction up to machine accuracy. The conservation of the magnetic flux is computed in a consistent way using the numerical flux of the finite volume discretization. For the unsteady problem, the time accuracy is obtained by a Newton subiteration at each physical timestep thereby converging the solenoidal constraint to steady state. We perform extensive numerical experiments to validate and demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed numerical technique.     

Conservative high order semi-Lagrangian finite difference WENO methods for advection in incompressible flow

In this paper, we propose a semi-Lagrangian finite difference formulation for approximating conservative form of advection equations with general variable coefficients. Compared with the traditional semi-Lagrangian finite difference schemes [5], [25], which approximate the advective form of the equation via direct characteristics tracing, the scheme proposed in this paper approximates the conservative form of the equation. This essential difference makes the proposed scheme naturally conservative for equations with general variable coefficients. The proposed conservative semi-Lagrangian finite difference framework is coupled with high order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) or weighted ENO (WENO) reconstructions to achieve high order accuracy in smooth parts of the solution and to capture sharp interfaces without introducing spurious oscillations. The scheme is extended to high dimensional problems by Strang splitting. The performance of the proposed schemes is demonstrated by linear advection, rigid body rotation, swirling deformation, and two dimensional incompressible flow simulation in the vorticity stream-function formulation. As the information is propagating along characteristics, the proposed scheme does not have the CFL time step restriction of the Eulerian method, allowing for a more efficient numerical realization for many application problems.     

对流占优扩散问题的高精度直线法

基于常微分方程边值问题的高精度求解器SEVORD对偏微分方程作半离散,提出了求解一维对流扩散方程的高精度直线法,并采用局部一维化方法(LOD)给出了求解二维对流扩散问题的高精度交替方向直线法。     

分辨率优化的混合WENO格式

为提高有限差分格式的分辨率,利用傅里叶分析对WENO格式进行色散及耗散优化,并给出优化的线性权重.用优化后的WENO格式与保单调格式（MP）进行加权混合,得到新的加权混合WENO格式（H-WENO）.通过一维激波管问题、Shu-Osher问题及二维双Mach反射问题及R-T不稳定性问题对格式进行数值测试.结果显示,新格式具有强健的激波捕捉能力和对小尺度波结构的高分辨率,与原WENO格式相比改进明显.     

An adaptive moving mesh method for two-dimensional ideal magnetohydrodynamics

This paper presents an adaptive moving mesh algorithm for two-dimensional (2D) ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) that utilizes a staggered constrained transport technique to keep the magnetic field divergence-free. The algorithm consists of two independent parts: MHD evolution and mesh-redistribution. The first part is a high-resolution, divergence-free, shock-capturing scheme on a fixed quadrangular mesh, while the second part is an iterative procedure. In each iteration, mesh points are first redistributed, and then a conservative-interpolation formula is used to calculate the remapped cell-averages of the mass, momentum, and total energy on the resulting new mesh; the magnetic potential is remapped to the new mesh in a non-conservative way and is reconstructed to give a divergence-free magnetic field on the new mesh. Several numerical examples are given to demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve high numerical accuracy, track and resolve strong shock waves in ideal MHD problems, and preserve divergence-free property of the magnetic field. Numerical examples include the smooth Alfvén wave problem, 2D and 2.5D shock tube problems, two rotor problems, the stringent blast problem, and the cloud–shock interaction problem.     

Arbitrary order exactly divergence-free central discontinuous Galerkin methods for ideal MHD equations

Ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations consist of a set of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws, with a divergence-free constraint on the magnetic field. Neglecting this constraint in the design of computational methods may lead to numerical instability or nonphysical features in solutions. In our recent work [F. Li, L. Xu, S. Yakovlev, Central discontinuous Galerkin methods for ideal MHD equations with the exactly divergence-free magnetic field, Journal of Computational Physics 230 (2011) 4828–4847], second and third order exactly divergence-free central discontinuous Galerkin methods were proposed for ideal MHD equations. In this paper, we further develop such methods with higher order accuracy. The novelty here is that the well-established H(div)-conforming finite element spaces are used in the constrained transport type framework, and the magnetic induction equations are extensively explored in order to extract sufficient information to uniquely reconstruct an exactly divergence-free magnetic field. The overall algorithm is local, and it can be of arbitrary order of accuracy. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods especially when they are fourth order accurate.     

Balanced finite volume WENO and central WENO schemes for the shallow water and the open-channel flow equations

The goal of this work is to extend finite volume WENO and central WENO schemes to the hyperbolic balance laws with geometrical source term and spatially variable flux function. In particular, we apply proposed schemes to the shallow water and the open-channel flow equations where the source term depends on the channel geometry. For obtaining stable numerical schemes that are free of spurious oscillations, it becomes crucial to use the decomposed source term evaluation, which maintains the balancing between the flux gradient and the source term. In addition, the open-channel flow equations contain spatially variable flux function. The appropriate definitions of the terms that arise in the source term decomposition, in combination with the Roe approximate Riemann solver that includes the spatial derivative of the flux function, lead to the finite volume WENO scheme that satisfies the exact conservation property – the property of preserving the quiescent flow exactly. When the central WENO schemes are applied, additional reformulations are introduced for the transition from the staggered values to the nonstaggered ones and vice versa by using the WENO reconstruction procedure. The proposed central WENO schemes also preserve the quiescent flow, but only in prismatic channels. In various test problems the obtained balanced schemes show improvements in comparison with the standard versions of the proposed type schemes, as well as with some other first- and second-order numerical schemes.     

An unsplit staggered mesh scheme for multidimensional magnetohydrodynamics

We introduce an unsplit staggered mesh scheme (USM) for multidimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) that uses a constrained transport (CT) method with high-order Godunov fluxes and incorporates a new data reconstruction–evolution algorithm for second-order MHD interface states. In this new algorithm, the USM scheme includes so-called “multidimensional MHD terms”, proportional to $?·\mathbf{B}$, in a dimensionally-unsplit way in a single update. This data reconstruction–evolution step, extended from the corner transport upwind (CTU) approach of Colella, maintains in-plane dynamics very well, as shown by the advection of a very weak magnetic field loop in 2D. This data reconstruction–evolution algorithm is also of advantage in its consistency and simplicity when extended to 3D. The scheme maintains the $?·\mathbf{B}=0$ constraint by solving a set of discrete induction equations using the standard CT approach, where the accuracy of the computed electric field directly influences the quality of the magnetic field solution. We address the lack of proper dissipative behavior in the simple electric field averaging scheme and present a new modified electric field construction (MEC) that includes multidimensional derivative information and enhances solution accuracy. A series of comparison studies demonstrates the excellent performance of the full USM–MEC scheme for many stringent multidimensional MHD test problems chosen from the literature. The scheme is implemented and currently freely available in the University of Chicago ASC FLASH Center’s FLASH3 release.     

Implicit preconditioned WENO scheme for steady viscous flow computation

A class of lower–upper symmetric Gauss–Seidel implicit weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) schemes is developed for solving the preconditioned Navier–Stokes equations of primitive variables with Spalart–Allmaras one-equation turbulence model. The numerical flux of the present preconditioned WENO schemes consists of a first-order part and high-order part. For first-order part, we adopt the preconditioned Roe scheme and for the high-order part, we employ preconditioned WENO methods. For comparison purpose, a preconditioned TVD scheme is also given and tested. A time-derivative preconditioning algorithm is devised and a discriminant is devised for adjusting the preconditioning parameters at low Mach numbers and turning off the preconditioning at intermediate or high Mach numbers. The computations are performed for the two-dimensional lid driven cavity flow, low subsonic viscous flow over S809 airfoil, three-dimensional low speed viscous flow over 6:1 prolate spheroid, transonic flow over ONERA-M6 wing and hypersonic flow over HB-2 model. The solutions of the present algorithms are in good agreement with the experimental data. The application of the preconditioned WENO schemes to viscous flows at all speeds not only enhances the accuracy and robustness of resolving shock and discontinuities for supersonic flows, but also improves the accuracy of low Mach number flow with complicated smooth solution structures.