Simulations for gas flows in microgeometries using the direct simulation Monte Carlo method

Micro gas flows are often encountered in MEMS devices and classical CFD could not accurately predict the flow and thermal behavior due to the high Knudsen number. Therefore, the gas flow in microgeometries was investigated using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. New treatments for boundary conditions are verified by simulations of micro-Poiseuille flow, compared with the previous boundary treatments, and slip analytical solutions of the continuum theory. The orifice flow and the corner flow in microchannels are simulated using the modified DSMC codes. The predictions were compared with existing experimental phenomena as well as predictions using continuum theory. The results showed that the channel geometry significantly affects the microgas flow. In the orifice flow, the flow separation occurred at very small Reynolds numbers. In the corner flow, no flow separation occurred even with a high driving pressure. The DSMC results agreed well with existing experimental information.     

自适应多重网格有限元网格生成器研制

基于协调三角形剖分算法、分子表数据结构和Ｚｉｅｎｋｉｅｗｉｃｚ－Ｚｈｕ误差估计方法，本文研制出适用于自适应多重网格有限元的网格生成器。该网格生成器可对复杂的区域进行自适应加密。当荷载作用边界随时间变化及在动力荷载作用下，网格生成器可退化与再加密网格。     

Discontinuity-capturing finite element computation of unsteady flow with adaptive unstructured mesh

A discontinuity-capturing scheme of finite element method (FEM) is proposed. The unstructured-grid technique combined with a new type of adaptive mesh approach is developed for both compressible and incompressible unsteady flows, which exhibits the capability of capturing the shock waves and/or thin shear layers accurately in an unsteady viscous flow at high Reynolds number. In particular, a new testing variable, i.e., the disturbed kinetic energyE, is suggested and used in the adaptive mesh computation, which is universally applicable to the capturing of both shock waves and shear layers in the inviscid flow and viscous flow at high Reynolds number. Based on several calculated examples, this approach has been proved to be effective and efficient for the calculations of compressible and incompressible flows. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10125210), the Hundred-Talent Programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KJCX-SW-L04, KJCX2-SW-L2)     

一种新的求解对流占优问题的自适应网格细化方法

在均匀网格上求解对流占优问题时,往往会产生数值震荡现象,因此需要局部加密网格来提高解的精度。针对对流占优问题,设计了一种新的自适应网格细化算法。该方法采用流线迎风SUPG(Petrov-Galerkin)格式求解对流占优问题,定义了网格尺寸并通过后验误差估计子修正来指导自适应网格细化,以泡泡型局部网格生成算法BLMG为网格生成器,通过模拟泡泡在区域中的运动得到了高质量的点集。与其他自适应网格细化方法相比,该方法可在同一框架内实现网格的细化和粗化,同时在所有细化层得到了高质量的网格。数值算例结果表明,该方法在求解对流占优问题时具有更高的数值精度和更好的收敛性。     

Adaptive mesh refinement‐enhanced local DFD method and its application to solve Navier–Stokes equations

Recently, the domain‐free discretization (DFD) method was presented to efficiently solve problems with complex geometries without introducing the coordinate transformation. In order to exploit the high performance of the DFD method, in this paper, the local DFD method with the use of Cartesian mesh is presented, where the physical domain is covered by a Cartesian mesh and the local DFD method is applied for numerical discretization. In order to further improve the efficiency of the solver, the newly developed solution‐based adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique is also introduced. The proposed methods are then applied to the simulation of natural convection in concentric annuli between a square outer cylinder and a circular inner cylinder. Numerical experiments show that the present numerical results agree very well with available data in the literature, and AMR‐enhanced local DFD method is an effective tool for the computation of flow problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical analysis of moving interfaces using a level set method coupled with adaptive mesh refinement

A novel numerical scheme is developed by coupling the level set method with the adaptive mesh refinement in order to analyse moving interfaces economically and accurately. The finite element method (FEM) is used to discretize the governing equations with the generalized simplified marker and cell (GSMAC) scheme, and the cubic interpolated pseudo‐particle (CIP) method is applied to the reinitialization of the level set function. The present adaptive mesh refinement is implemented in the quadrangular grid systems and easily embedded in the FEM‐based algorithm. For the judgement on renewal of mesh, the level set function is adopted as an indicator, and the threshold is set at the boundary of the smoothing band. With this criterion, the variation of physical properties and the jump quantity on the free surface can be calculated accurately enough, while the computation cost is largely reduced as a whole. In order to prove the validity of the present scheme, two‐dimensional numerical simulation is carried out in collapse of a water column, oscillation and movement of a drop under zero gravity. As a result, its effectiveness and usefulness are clearly shown qualitatively and quantitatively. Among them, the movement of a drop due to the Marangoni effect is first simulated efficiently with the present scheme. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive mesh refinement for simulating fluid-structure interaction using a sharp interface immersed boundary method

In this article, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is performed to simulate flow around both stationary and moving boundaries. The finite-difference approach is applied along with a sharp interface immersed boundary (IB) method. The Lagrangian polynomial is employed to facilitate the interpolation from a coarse to a fine grid level, while a weighted-average formula is used to transfer variables inversely. To save memory, the finest grid is only generated in the local areas close to the wall boundary, and the mesh is dynamically reconstructed based on the location of the wall boundary. The Navier-Stokes equations are numerically solved through the second-order central difference scheme in space and the third-order Runge-Kutta time integration. Flow around a circular cylinder rotating in a square domain is firstly simulated to examine the accuracy and convergence rate. Then three cases are investigated to test the validity of the present method: flow past a stationary circular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers, flow past a forced oscillating circular cylinder in the transverse direction at various frequencies, and a free circular cylinder subjected to vortex-induced vibration in two degrees of freedom. Computational results agree well with these in the literature and the flow fields are smooth around the interface of different refinement levels. The effect of refinement level has also been evaluated. In addition, a study for the computational efficiency shows that the AMR approach is helpful to reduce the total node number and speed up the time integration, which could prompt the application of the IB method when a great near-wall spatial resolution is required.     

Effect of collision‐partner selection schemes on the accuracy and efficiency of the direct simulation Monte Carlo method

The effect of the collision‐partner selection scheme on the accuracy and the efficiency of the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo method is investigated. Several schemes that reduce the mean collision separation, including the fixed sub‐cell scheme, the transient adaptive sub‐cell scheme, and the virtual sub‐cell scheme, are evaluated. Additionally, a new scheme is proposed that limits the population from which collision partners are selected based on the distance traveled by a simulator and performs near‐neighbor collisions using this population. These collision‐partner selection schemes are assessed for Fourier flow (heat conduction between parallel plates) and a standard hypersonic benchmark problem (Mach 15.6 nitrogen flow over a 25–55° biconic). The new limited‐selection near‐neighbor scheme has superior performance compared to the other schemes for both flows and reduces both the spatial and temporal discretization errors relative to random‐selection and nearest‐neighbor collision‐partner selection schemes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

三维非结构网格DSMC方法的实现及其应用

研究了三维非结构网格DSMC方法实现的过程。将Bird位置元方案中的子网格思想引入到非结构网格上来,只存储子网格的总体标识号,利用较少的计算网格提高了分子的分辨率与计算精度。提出了将体积元坐标搜索算法与交替数字二叉树搜索算法(ADT)相结合的方法来跟踪模拟分子在网格之间的迁移,使用ADT方法判别分子与物面是否作用,避免了分子表面反射的非确定论判据。利用Fortran 90的动态分配内存技术编制了通用计算程序。最后对高超声速过渡流域航天飞机头部外形绕流进行了数值模拟,数值结果初步验证了算法的可行性。     

A high‐order flux reconstruction adaptive mesh refinement method for magnetohydrodynamics on unstructured grids

We report our recent development of the high‐order flux reconstruction adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method for magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). The resulted framework features a shock‐capturing duo of AMR and artificial resistivity (AR), which can robustly capture shocks and rotational and contact discontinuities with a fraction of the cell counts that are usually required. In our previous paper, 36 we have presented a shock‐capturing framework on hydrodynamic problems with artificial diffusivity and AMR. Our AMR approach features a tree‐free, direct‐addressing approach in retrieving data across multiple levels of refinement. In this article, we report an extension to MHD systems that retains the flexibility of using unstructured grids. The challenges due to complex shock structures and divergence‐free constraint of magnetic field are more difficult to deal with than those of hydrodynamic systems. The accuracy of our solver hinges on 2 properties to achieve high‐order accuracy on MHD systems: removing the divergence error thoroughly and resolving discontinuities accurately. A hyperbolic divergence cleaning method with multiple subiterations is used for the first task. This method drives away the divergence error and preserves conservative forms of the governing equations. The subiteration can be accelerated by absorbing a pseudo time step into the wave speed coefficient, therefore enjoys a relaxed CFL condition. The AMR method rallies multiple levels of refined cells around various shock discontinuities, and it coordinates with the AR method to obtain sharp shock profiles. The physically consistent AR method localizes discontinuities and damps the spurious oscillation arising in the curl of the magnetic field. The effectiveness of the AMR and AR combination is demonstrated to be much more powerful than simply adding AR on finer and finer mesh, since the AMR steeply reduces the required amount of AR and confines the added artificial diffusivity and resistivity to a narrower and narrower region. We are able to verify the designed high‐order accuracy in space by using smooth flow test problems on unstructured grids. The efficiency and robustness of this framework are fully demonstrated through a number of two‐dimensional nonsmooth ideal MHD tests. We also successfully demonstrate that the AMR method can help significantly save computational cost for the Orszag‐Tang vortex problem.     

Two-dimensional numerical simulations of multi-headed detonations in oxygen-aluminum mixtures using an adaptive mesh refinement

Abstract. Two-dimensional numerical simulations of detonations in two-phase lean mixtures of aluminum particles and pure oxygen have been performed. The computational procedure adopts an adaptive mesh refinement methodology in order to increase spatial resolution in the most interesting parts of the flow field. A one-step heterogeneous reaction describes the evaporation and combustion of aluminum. Depending on the gas-phase temperature, the combustion product is aluminum oxide or aluminum monoxide. The results show that the heterogeneous detonations resemble gaseous single-phase ones although the scale of the phenomena is very different. The detonation of aluminum dust evolves into the 2-headed mode of propagation with the characteristic detonation cell width equal to cm. For aluminum dust the cellular structure is much finer. The detonation initially propagates in the 11-headed mode with the characteristic cell width equal to cm and evolves into the 8.5-headed mode with the characteristic cell size $\lambda_{\rm cell}$ equal to cm. Received 7 May 2001 / Accepted 25 March 2002 Published online 23 January 2003 Correspondence to: K. Benkiewicz (e-mail: kbenk@cow.me.aoyama.ac.jp)     

Patched grid and adaptive mesh refinement strategies for the calculation of the transport of vortices

This paper presents two techniques allowing local grid refinement to calculate the transport of vortices. one is the patched grid (PG) method which allows non‐coincident interfaces between blocks. Treatment of the non‐coincident interfaces is given in detail. The second one is the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method which has been developed in order to create embedded sub‐grids. The efficiency of these two methods is demonstrated by some validating tests. Then the PG and AMR strategies are applied in the computation of the transport of vortices. We start with a simple vortex flow in a cubic box. Then, the flowfield around a complex aircraft configuration is calculated using the two refinement techniques. Results are compared with a fine, referenced grid calculation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Molecular models for simulation of rarefied gas flows using direct simulation Monte Carlo method

The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is a technique for the numerical simulation of the rarefied gas flows by employing simulated molecules in simulated physical spaces. In the procedures involved in DSMC, the accuracy of the simulation of intermolecular collisions depends on the collision model adopted in the collision routine. The simplest molecular model is the hard-sphere model. In order to improve the accuracy of the simulations, more and more refined collision models were introduced for the use in DSMC. Thus, the variable hard-sphere, the variable soft-sphere, the generalised hard-sphere, the generalised soft-sphere and the variable sphere models were put forward by various researchers. And, all these models have met with varying degrees of success. Meanwhile, the Borgnakke-Larsen model, statistical inelastic cross-section models for both continuous and discrete internal energy and the dynamic molecular collision model were proposed for the treatment of polyatomic molecules in which transfer of energy among translational, rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom is possible. This paper gives a brief introduction to the intermolecular potentials based on which the molecular models have been constructed. Then the various models are introduced in the chronological sequence; finally concluding with a brief summary of the progress that has been made so far in this area.     

Reordering and incomplete preconditioning in serial and parallel adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening flow solutions

The effects of reordering the unknowns on the convergence of incomplete factorization preconditioned Krylov subspace methods are investigated. Of particular interest is the resulting preconditioned iterative solver behavior when adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening (AMR/C) are utilized for serial or distributed parallel simulations. As representative schemes, we consider the familiar reverse Cuthill–McKee and quotient minimum degree algorithms applied with incomplete factorization preconditioners to CG and GMRES solvers. In the parallel distributed case, reordering is applied to local subdomains for block ILU preconditioning, and subdomains are repartitioned dynamically as mesh adaptation proceeds. Numerical studies for representative applications are conducted using the object‐oriented AMR/C software system libMesh linked to the PETSc solver library. Serial tests demonstrate that global unknown reordering and incomplete factorization preconditioning can reduce the number of iterations and improve serial CPU time in AMR/C computations. Parallel experiments indicate that local reordering for subdomain block preconditioning associated with dynamic repartitioning because of AMR/C leads to an overall reduction in processing time. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study on flow past two spheres in tandem arrangement using a local mesh refinement virtual boundary method

A local mesh refinement virtual boundary method based on a uniform grid is designed to study the transition between the flow patterns of two spheres in tandem arrangement for Re=250. For a small gap (L/D=1.5), the flow field is axisymmetric. As the spacing ratio increases to 2.0, the pressure gradient induces the circumferential fluid motion and a plane‐symmetric flow is constructed through a regular bifurcation. For L/D?2.5, the vortices are periodically shed from the right sphere, but the planar symmetry remains. The case for L/D=3.0 is picked up to give a detail investigation for the unsteady flow. The shedding frequency of vortical structure from the upper side of the right sphere is found to be double of the frequency of the lower side. With the flow spectra of various gaps given, the underlying competitive mechanism between the two shedding frequencies is studied and a critical spacing gap is revealed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high-order Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method with a subcell limiter on adaptive unstructured grids for two-dimensional compressible inviscid flows

A robust, adaptive unstructured mesh refinement strategy for high-order Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method is proposed. The present work mainly focuses on accurate capturing of sharp gradient flow features like strong shocks in the simulations of two-dimensional inviscid compressible flows. A posteriori finite volume subcell limiter is employed in the shock-affected cells to control numerical spurious oscillations. An efficient cell-by-cell adaptive mesh refinement is implemented to increase the resolution of our simulations. This strategy enables to capture strong shocks without much numerical dissipation. A wide range of challenging test cases is considered to demonstrate the efficiency of the present adaptive numerical strategy for solving inviscid compressible flow problems having strong shocks.     

Transient flow around an impulsively started cylinder using a dynamic mesh method

The finite volume method (FVM) with a dynamic mesh method (DMM) to deal with the moving boundary was applied to the simulation of two-dimensional incompressible viscous flow past a circular cylinder that is impulsively started into rotation and translation. The non-dimensional rotating to translating speed ratio α is varied from 0.28 to 2.07, with the Reynolds number being 200 for the range of α. The computation covers a period, during which the cylinder translates seven times its diameter. The current scheme handles the impulsively moving boundary directly by DMM, which is implemented using both mesh deforming and local remeshing. The instantaneous asymmetrical flow configurations for various α are presented and compared with the experimental visualizations. Quantitatively, the velocity distributions with drag and lift coefficients are also compared with the experimental and numerical results. Results show that the flow is strongly influenced by the rotation. Comparisons are found to be satisfactory.     

Numerical simulation of compressible multifluid flows using an adaptive positivity-preserving RKDG-GFM approach

The Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method together with a refined real-ghost fluid method is incorporated into an adaptive mesh refinement environment for solving compressible multifluid flows, where the level set method is used to capture the moving material interface. To ensure that the Riemann problem is exactly along the normal direction of the material interface, a simple and efficient modification is introduced into the original real-ghost fluid method for constructing the interfacial Riemann problem, and the initial conditions of the Riemann problem are obtained directly from the solution polynomials of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element space. In addition, a positivity-preserving limiter is introduced into the Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method to suppress the failure of preserving positivity of density or pressure for the problems involving strong shock wave or shock interaction with material interface. For interfacial cells in adaptive mesh refinement, the data transfer between different grid levels is achieved by using a L² projection approach along with the least squares fitting. Various numerical cases, including multifluid shock tubes, underwater explosions, and shock-induced collapse of a underwater air bubble, are computed to assess the capability of the present adaptive positivity-preserving RKDG-GFM approach, and the simulated results show that the present approach is quite robust and can provide relatively reasonable results across a wide variety of flow regimes, even for problems involving strong shock wave or shock wave impacting high acoustic impedance mismatch material interface.     

A high‐precision unstructured adaptive mesh technique for gas–liquid two‐phase flows

Adaptive mesh techniques are used widely in the numerical simulations of fluid flows, and the simulation results with high accuracies are obtained by appropriate mesh adaptations. However, gas–liquid two‐phase flows are still difficult to be simulated on adaptive meshes, especially on unstructured adaptive meshes, because the physical phenomena near gas–liquid interfaces are highly complicated and in general, not modeled appropriately on adaptive meshes. In this paper, a high‐precision unstructured adaptive mesh technique for gas–liquid two‐phase flows is developed and verified/validated. In the unstructured adaptive mesh technique, the PLIC algorithm is employed to simulate interfacial dynamic behaviors and, therefore, the reconstruction method for the interfaces in refined cells is developed, which satisfies the gas and liquid volume conservations and geometrical conservations of interfaces. In addition, the physics‐based consideration is performed on the momentum calculations near interfaces, and the calculation method with gas and liquid momentum conservations is developed. For verification, the slotted‐disk revolution problem is solved. As a result, the unstructured adaptive mesh technique succeeds in reproducing the slotted‐disk shape accurately and well maintaining the shape after one full‐revolution. The dam‐break problem is also simulated and the momentum conservative calculation method succeeds in providing physically appropriate results, which show good agreements with experimental data. Therefore, it is confirmed that the developed unstructured adaptive mesh technique is very efficient to simulate gas–liquid two‐phase flows accurately. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Large eddy simulation using a dynamic mixing length subgrid‐scale model

A novel dynamic mixing length (DML) subgrid‐scale model for large eddy simulations is proposed in this work to improve the cutoff length of the Smagorinsky model. The characteristic mixing length (or the characteristic wave number) is dynamically estimated for the subgrid‐scale fluctuation of turbulence by the cutoff wave‐number, k_c, and the dissipation wave‐number, k_d. The dissipation wave number is derived from the kinetic energy spectrum equation and the dissipation spectrum equation. To prove the promise of the DML model, this model is used to simulate the lid‐driven cubical cavity with max‐velocity‐based Reynolds numbers 8850 and 12,000, the channel flows with friction‐velocity‐based Reynolds numbers 180, 395, 590, and 950, and the turbulent flow past a square cylinder at the higher Reynolds number 21,400, respectively, compared with the Smagorinsky model and Germano et al.'s dynamic Smagorinsky model. Different numerical experiments with different Reynolds numbers show that the DML model can be used in simulations of flows with a wide range of Reynolds numbers without the occurrence of singular values. The DML model can alleviate the dissipation of the Smagorinsky model without the loss of its robustness. The DML model shows some advantages over Germano et al.'s dynamic Smagorinsky model in its high stability and simplicity of calculation because the coefficient of the DML model always stays positive. The characteristic mixing length in the DML model reflects the subgrid‐scale fluctuation of turbulence in nature and thus the characteristic mixing length has a spatial and temporal distribution in turbulent flow. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.