A versatile incompressible Navier–Stokes solver for blood flow application

We present in this paper an integrated approach to compute quickly an incompressible Navier–Stokes (NS) flow in a section of a large blood vessel using medical imaging data. The goal is essentially to provide a first‐order approximation of some main quantities of interest in cardiovascular disease: the shear stress and the pressure on the wall. The NS solver relies on the L₂ penalty approach pioneered by Caltagirone and co‐workers and combines nicely with a level set method based on the Mumford–Shah energy model. Simulations on stenosis cases based on angiogram are run in parallel with MatlabMPI on a shared‐memory machine. While MatlabMPI communications are based on the load and save functions of Matlab and have high latency indeed, we show that our Aitken–Schwarz domain decomposition algorithm provides a good parallel efficiency and scalability of the NS code. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes solver for large eddy simulation of turbulent flows

An unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes solver that uses a dual time stepping method combined with spatially high‐order‐accurate finite differences, is developed for large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows. The present solver uses a primitive variable formulation that is based on the artificial compressibility method and various convergence–acceleration techniques are incorporated to efficiently simulate unsteady flows. A localized dynamic subgrid model, which is formulated using the subgrid kinetic energy, is employed for subgrid turbulence modeling. To evaluate the accuracy and the efficiency of the new solver, a posteriori tests for various turbulent flows are carried out and the resulting turbulence statistics are compared with existing experimental and direct numerical simulation (DNS) data. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A semi‐Lagrangian level set method for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with free surface

In this paper, we formulate a level set method in the framework of finite elements‐semi‐Lagrangian methods to compute the solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with free surface. In our formulation, we use a quasi‐monotone semi‐Lagrangian scheme, which is both unconditionally stable and essentially non oscillatory, to compute the advective terms in the Navier–Stokes equations, the transport equation and the equation of the reinitialization stage for the level set function. The method we propose is quite robust and flexible with regard to the mesh and the geometry of the domain, as well as the magnitude of the Reynolds number. We illustrate the performance of the method in several examples, which range from a benchmark problem to test the volume conservation property of the method to the flow past a NACA0012 foil at high Reynolds number. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of preconditioners for incompressible Navier–Stokes solvers

We consider solution methods for large systems of linear equations that arise from the finite element discretization of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. These systems are of the so‐called saddle point type, which means that there is a large block of zeros on the main diagonal. To solve these types of systems efficiently, several block preconditioners have been published. These types of preconditioners require adaptation of standard finite element packages. The alternative is to apply a standard ILU preconditioner in combination with a suitable renumbering of unknowns. We introduce a reordering technique for the degrees of freedom that makes the application of ILU relatively fast. We compare the performance of this technique with some block preconditioners. The performance appears to depend on grid size, Reynolds number and quality of the mesh. For medium‐sized problems, which are of practical interest, we show that the reordering technique is competitive with the block preconditioners. Its simple implementation makes it worthwhile to implement it in the standard finite element method software. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Chimera method for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

The Chimera method was developed three decades ago as a meshing simplification tool. Different components are meshed independently and then glued together using a domain decomposition technique to couple the equations solved on each component. This coupling is achieved via transmission conditions (in the finite element context) or by imposing the continuity of fluxes (in the finite volume context). Historically, the method has then been used extensively to treat moving objects, as the independent meshes are free to move with respect to the others. At each time step, the main task consists in recomputing the interpolation of the transmission conditions or fluxes. This paper presents a Chimera method applied to the Navier–Stokes equations. After an introduction on the Chimera method, we describe in two different sections the two independent steps of the method: the hole cutting to create the interfaces of the subdomains and the coupling of the subdomains. Then, we present the Navier–Stokes solver considered in this work. Implementation aspects are then detailed in order to apply efficiently the method to this specific parallel Navier–Stokes solver. We conclude with some examples to demonstrate the reliability and application of the proposed method. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Navier–Stokes solver for complex three-dimensional turbulent flows adopting non-linear modelling of the Reynolds stresses

A non-linear modelling of the Reynolds stresses has been incorporated into a Navier–Stokes solver for complex three-dimensional geometries. A k–ε model, adopting a modelling of the turbulent transport which is not based on the eddy viscosity, has been written in generalised co-ordinates and solved with a finite volume approach, using both a GMRES solver and a direct solver for the solution of the linear systems of equations. An additional term, quadratic in the main strain rate, has been introduced into the modelling of the Reynolds stresses to the basic Boussinesq's form; the corresponding constant has been evaluated through comparison with the experimental data. The computational procedure is implemented for the flow analysis in a 90° square section bend and the obtained results show that with the non-linear modelling a much better agreement with the measured data is obtained, both for the velocity and the pressure. The importance of the convection scheme is also discussed, showing how the effect of the non-linear correction added to the Reynolds stresses is effectively hidden by the additional numerical diffusion introduced by a low-order convection scheme as the first-order upwind scheme, thus making the use of higher order schemes necessary. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pseudostress–velocity formulation for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

This paper presents a numerical algorithm using the pseudostress–velocity formulation to solve incompressible Newtonian flows. The pseudostress–velocity formulation is a variation of the stress–velocity formulation, which does not require symmetric tensor spaces in the finite element discretization. Hence its discretization is greatly simplified. The discrete system is further decoupled into an H ( div ) problem for the pseudostress and a post‐process resolving the velocity. This can be done conveniently by using the penalty method for steady‐state flows or by using the time discretization for nonsteady‐state flows. We apply this formulation to the 2D lid‐driven cavity problem and study its grid convergence rate. Also, computational results of the time‐dependent‐driven cavity problem and the flow past rectangular problem are reported. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Newton linearization of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

The present study aims to accelerate the convergence to incompressible Navier–Stokes solution. For the sake of computational efficiency, Newton linearization of equations is invoked on non‐staggered grids to shorten the sequence to the final solution of the non‐linear differential system of equations. For the sake of accuracy, the resulting convection–diffusion–reaction finite‐difference equation is solved line‐by‐line using the proposed nodally exact one‐dimensional scheme. The matrix size is reduced and, at the same time, the CPU time is considerably saved due to the decrease of stencil points. The effectiveness of the implemented Newton linearization is demonstrated through computational exercises. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effective downstream boundary conditions for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

The aim of this paper is to give open boundary conditions for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. From a weak formulation in velocity–pressure variables, some natural boundary conditions involving the traction or pseudotraction and inertial terms are established. Numerical experiments on the flow behind a cylinder show the efficiency of these conditions, which convey properly the vortices downstream. Comparisons with other boundary conditions for the velocity and pressure are also performed.     

The fundamental solution method for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

A complete boundary integral formulation for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with time discretization by operator splitting is developed using the fundamental solutions of the Helmholtz operator equation with different order. The numerical results for the lift and the drag hysteresis associated with a NACA0012 aerofoil oscillating in pitch show good agreement with available experimental data. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stabilized incremental projection scheme for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

It is well known that any spatial discretization of the saddle‐point Stokes problem should satisfy the Ladyzhenskaya–Brezzi–Babuska (LBB) stability condition in order to prevent the appearance of spurious pressure modes. Particularly, if an equal‐order approximation is applied, the Schur complement (or, as called some times, the Uzawa matrix) of the pressure system has a non‐trivial null space that gives rise to such modes. An idea in the past was that all the schemes that solve a Poisson equation for the pressure rather than the Uzawa pressure equation (splitting/projection methods) should overcome this difficulty; this idea was wrong. There is numerical evidence that at least the so‐called incremental projection scheme still suffers from spurious pressure oscillations if an equal‐order approximation is applied. The present paper tries to distinguish which projection requires LBB‐compliant approximation and which does not. Moreover, a stabilized version of the incremental projection scheme is derived. Proper bounds for the stabilization parameter are also given. The numerical results show that the stabilized scheme does indeed achieve second‐order accuracy and does not produce spurious (node to node) pressure oscillations. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A variational multiscale Newton–Schur approach for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

In the following paper, we present a consistent Newton–Schur (NS) solution approach for variational multiscale formulations of the time‐dependent Navier–Stokes equations in three dimensions. The main contributions of this work are a systematic study of the variational multiscale method for three‐dimensional problems and an implementation of a consistent formulation suitable for large problems with high nonlinearity, unstructured meshes, and non‐symmetric matrices. In addition to the quadratic convergence characteristics of a Newton–Raphson‐based scheme, the NS approach increases computational efficiency and parallel scalability by implementing the tangent stiffness matrix in Schur complement form. As a result, more computations are performed at the element level. Using a variational multiscale framework, we construct a two‐level approach to stabilizing the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations based on a coarse and fine‐scale subproblem. We then derive the Schur complement form of the consistent tangent matrix. We demonstrate the performance of the method for a number of three‐dimensional problems for Reynolds number up to 1000 including steady and time‐dependent flows. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An ALE finite element method for a coupled Stefan problem and Navier–Stokes equations with free capillary surface

In this article, an ALE finite element method to simulate the partial melting of a workpiece of metal is presented. The model includes the heat transport in both the solid and liquid part, fluid flow in the liquid phase by the Navier–Stokes equations, tracking of the melt interface solid/liquid by the Stefan condition, treatment of the capillary boundary accounting for surface tension effects and a radiative boundary condition. We show that an accurate treatment of the moving boundaries is crucial to resolve their respective influences on the flow field and thus on the overall energy transport correctly. This is achieved by a mesh‐moving method, which explicitly tracks the phase boundary and makes it possible to use a sharp interface model without singularities in the boundary conditions at the triple junction. A numerical example describing the welding of a thin‐steel wire end by a laser, where all aforementioned effects have to be taken into account, proves the effectiveness of the approach.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exact fully 3D Navier–Stokes solutions for benchmarking

Unsteady analytical solutions to the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are presented. They are fully three-dimensional vector solutions involving all three Cartesian velocity components, each of which depends non-trivially on all three co-ordinate directions. Although unlikely to be physically realized, they are well suited for benchmarking, testing and validation of three-dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes solvers. The use of such a solution for benchmarking purposes is described.     

Modified augmented Lagrangian preconditioners for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

We study different variants of the augmented Lagrangian (AL)‐based block‐triangular preconditioner introduced by the first two authors in [SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 2006; 28 : 2095–2113]. The preconditioners are used to accelerate the convergence of the Generalized Minimal Residual method (GMRES) applied to various finite element and Marker‐and‐Cell discretizations of the Oseen problem in two and three space dimensions. Both steady and unsteady problems are considered. Numerical experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed preconditioners for a wide range of problem parameters. Implementation on parallel architectures is also considered. The AL‐based approach is further generalized to deal with linear systems from stabilized finite element discretizations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive multigrid finite-volume scheme for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

An algorithm for the solutions of the two-dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations is presented. The algorithm can be used to compute both steady-state and time-dependent flow problems. It is based on an artificial compressibility method and uses higher-order upwind finite-volume techniques for the convective terms and a second-order finite-volume technique for the viscous terms. Three upwind schemes for discretizing convective terms are proposed here. An interesting result is that the solutions computed by one of them is not sensitive to the value of the artificial compressibility parameter. A second-order, two-step Runge–Kutta integration coupling with an implicit residual smoothing and with a multigrid method is used for achieving fast convergence for both steady- and unsteady-state problems. The numerical results agree well with experimental and other numerical data. A comparison with an analytically exact solution is performed to verify the space and time accuracy of the algorithm.     

A fractional-step method for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations related to a predictor–multicorrector algorithm

An implicit fractional-step method for the numerical solution of the time-dependent incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in primitive variables is studied in this paper. The method, which is first-order-accurate in the time step, is shown to converge to an exact solution of the equations. By adequately splitting the viscous term, it allows the enforcement of full Dirichlet boundary conditions on the velocity in all substeps of the scheme, unlike standard projection methods. The consideration of this method was actually motivated by the study of a well-known predictor–multicorrector algorithm, when this is applied to the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. A new derivation of the algorithm in a general setting is provided, showing in what sense it can also be understood as a fractional-step method; this justifies, in particular, why the original boundary conditions of the problem can be enforced in this algorithm. Two different finite element interpolations are considered for the space discretization, and numerical results obtained with them for standard benchmark cases are presented. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multigrid solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for three‐dimensional recirculating flow: coupled and decoupled smoothers compared

A comparison of multigrid methods for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in three dimensions is presented. The continuous equations are discretised on staggered grids using a second‐order monotonic scheme for the convective terms and implemented in defect correction form. The convergence characteristics of a decoupled method (SIMPLE) are compared with those of the cellwise coupled method (SCGS). The convergence rates obtained for computations of the three‐dimensional lid‐driven cavity problem are found to be very similar to those obtained for computations of the corresponding two‐dimensional problem with comparable grid density. Although the convergence rate of SCGS is thus superior to that of SIMPLE, the decoupled method is found to be more efficient computationally and requires less computing time for a given level of convergence. The linewise implementation of the coupled method (CLGS) is also investigated and shown to be more efficient than SCGS, although the convergence rate and computing time required per cycle are both found to depend on the direction of sweep. The optimal implementation of CLGS is found to be only marginally more effective than SIMPLE, but a change to the structure of the data storage would increase the advantage. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Least‐squares meshfree method for incompressible Navier–Stokes problems

A least‐squares meshfree method based on the first‐order velocity–pressure–vorticity formulation for two‐dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes problem is presented. The convective term is linearized by successive substitution or Newton's method. The discretization of all governing equations is implemented by the least‐squares method. Equal‐order moving least‐squares approximation is employed with Gauss quadrature in the background cells. The boundary conditions are enforced by the penalty method. The matrix‐free element‐by‐element Jacobi preconditioned conjugate method is applied to solve the discretized linear systems. Cavity flow for steady Navier–Stokes problem and the flow over a square obstacle for time‐dependent Navier–Stokes problem are investigated for the presented least‐squares meshfree method. The effects of inaccurate integration on the accuracy of the solution are investigated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.