A multislope MUSCL method on unstructured meshes applied to compressible Euler equations for axisymmetric swirling flows

A finite volume method for the numerical solution of axisymmetric inviscid swirling flows is presented. The governing equations of the flow are the axisymmetric compressible Euler equations including swirl (or tangential) velocity. A first-order scheme is introduced where the convective fluxes at cell interfaces are evaluated by the Rusanov or the HLLC numerical flux while the geometric source terms are discretizated to provide a well-balanced scheme i.e. the steady-state solutions with null velocity are preserved. Extension to the second-order space approximation using a multislope MUSCL method is then derived. To test the numerical scheme, a stationary solution of the fluid flow following the radial direction has been established with a zero and nonzero tangential velocity. Numerical and exact solutions are compared for classical Riemann problems where we employ different limiters and effectiveness of the multislope MUSCL scheme is demonstrated for strongly shocked axially symmetric flows like in spherical bubble compression problem. Two other tests with axisymmetric geometries are performed: the supersonic flow in a tube with a cone and the axisymmetric blunt body with a free stream.     

Self-adjusting entropy-stable scheme for compressible Euler equations

In this work,a self-adjusting entropy-stable scheme is proposed for solving compressible Euler equations.The entropy-stable scheme is constructed by combining the entropy conservative flux with a suitable diffusion operator.The entropy has to be preserved in smooth solutions and be dissipated at shocks.To achieve this,a switch function,which is based on entropy variables,is employed to make the numerical diffusion term be automatically added around discontinuities.The resulting scheme is still entropy-stable.A number of numerical experiments illustrating the robustness and accuracy of the scheme are presented.From these numerical results,we observe a remarkable gain in accuracy.     

A multi-moment finite volume formulation for shallow water equations on unstructured mesh

A novel and accurate finite volume method has been presented to solve the shallow water equations on unstructured grid in plane geometry. In addition to the volume integrated average (VIA moment) for each mesh cell, the point values (PV moment) defined on cell boundary are also treated as the model variables. The volume integrated average is updated via a finite volume formulation, and thus is numerically conserved, while the point value is computed by a point-wise Riemann solver. The cell-wise local interpolation reconstruction is built based on both the VIA and the PV moments, which results in a scheme of almost third order accuracy. Efforts have also been made to formulate the source term of the bottom topography in a way to balance the numerical flux function to satisfy the so-called C-property. The proposed numerical model is validated by numerical tests in comparison with other methods reported in the literature.     

Construction of very high order residual distribution schemes for steady inviscid flow problems on hybrid unstructured meshes

In this paper we consider the very high order approximation of solutions of the Euler equations. We present a systematic generalization of the residual distribution method of [1] to very high order of accuracy, by extending the preliminary work discussed in [2] to systems and hybrid meshes. We present extensive numerical validation for the third and fourth order cases with Lagrange finite elements. In particular, we demonstrate that we both have a non-oscillatory behavior, even for very strong shocks and complex flow patterns, and the expected accuracy on smooth problems.     

Hierarchical reconstruction for spectral volume method on unstructured grids

The hierarchical reconstruction (HR) [Y.-J. Liu, C.-W. Shu, E. Tadmor, M.-P. Zhang, Central discontinuous Galerkin methods on overlapping cells with a non-oscillatory hierarchical reconstruction, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 45 (2007) 2442–2467; Z.-L. Xu, Y.-J. Liu, C.-W. Shu, Hierarchical reconstruction for discontinuous Galerkin methods on unstructured grids with a WENO type linear reconstruction and partial neighboring cells, J. Comput. Phys. 228 (2009) 2194–2212] is applied to a piecewise quadratic spectral volume method on two-dimensional unstructured grids as a limiting procedure to prevent spurious oscillations in numerical solutions. The key features of this HR are that the reconstruction on each control volume only uses adjacent control volumes, which forms a compact stencil set, and there is no truncation of higher degree terms of the polynomial. We explore a WENO-type linear reconstruction on each hierarchical level for the reconstruction of high degree polynomials. Numerical computations for scalar and system of nonlinear hyperbolic equations are performed. We demonstrate that the hierarchical reconstruction can generate essentially non-oscillatory solutions while keeping the resolution and desired order of accuracy for smooth solutions.     

A unifying lifting collocation penalty formulation including the discontinuous Galerkin, spectral volume/difference methods for conservation laws on mixed grids

Recently a new high-order formulation for 1D conservation laws was developed by Huynh using the idea of “flux reconstruction”. The formulation was capable of unifying several popular methods including the discontinuous Galerkin, staggered-grid multi-domain method, or the spectral difference/spectral volume methods into a single family. The extension of the method to quadrilateral and hexahedral elements is straightforward. In an attempt to extend the method to other element types such as triangular, tetrahedral or prismatic elements, the idea of “flux reconstruction” is generalized into a “lifting collocation penalty” approach. With a judicious selection of solution points and flux points, the approach can be made simple and efficient to implement for mixed grids. In addition, the formulation includes the discontinuous Galerkin, spectral volume and spectral difference methods as special cases. Several test problems are presented to demonstrate the capability of the method.     

A hybrid multilevel method for high-order discretization of the Euler equations on unstructured meshes

Higher order discretization has not been widely successful in industrial applications to compressible flow simulation. Among several reasons for this, one may identify the lack of tailor-suited, best-practice relaxation techniques that compare favorably to highly tuned lower order methods, such as finite-volume schemes. In this paper we investigate solution algorithms in conjunction with high-order Spectral Difference discretization for the Euler equations, using such techniques as multigrid and matrix-free implicit relaxation methods. In particular we present a novel hybrid multilevel relaxation method that combines (optionally matrix-free) implicit relaxation techniques with explicit multistage smoothing using geometric multigrid. Furthermore, we discuss efficient implementation of these concepts using such tools as automatic differentiation.     

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 compatible and conservative spectral element method on unstructured grids

We derive a formulation of the spectral element method which is compatible on very general unstructured three-dimensional grids. Here compatible means that the method retains discrete analogs of several key properties of the divergence, gradient and curl operators: the divergence and gradient are anti-adjoints (the negative transpose) of each other, the curl is self-adjoint and annihilates the gradient operator, and the divergence annihilates the curl. The adjoint relations hold globally, and at the element level with the inclusion of a natural discrete element boundary flux term.     

The multi-dimensional limiters for solving hyperbolic conservation laws on unstructured grids

Novel limiters based on the weighted average procedure are developed for finite volume methods solving multi-dimensional hyperbolic conservation laws on unstructured grids. The development of these limiters is inspired by the biased averaging procedure of Choi and Liu [10]. The remarkable features of the present limiters are the new biased functions and the weighted average procedure, which enable the present limiter to capture strong shock waves and achieve excellent convergence for steady state computations. The mechanism of the developed limiters for eliminating spurious oscillations in the vicinity of discontinuities is revealed by studying the asymptotic behavior of the limiters. Numerical experiments for a variety of test cases are presented to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed limiters.     

An Asymptotic Preserving scheme for the Euler equations in a strong magnetic field

This paper is concerned with the numerical approximation of the isothermal Euler equations for charged particles subject to the Lorentz force (the ‘Euler–Lorentz’ system). When the magnetic field is large, or equivalently, when the parameter ε$\epsilon$ representing the non-dimensional ion cyclotron frequency tends to zero, the so-called drift-fluid (or gyro-fluid) approximation is obtained. In this limit, the parallel motion relative to the magnetic field direction splits from perpendicular motion and is given implicitly by the constraint of zero total force along the magnetic field lines. In this paper, we provide a well-posed elliptic equation for the parallel velocity which in turn allows us to construct an Asymptotic-Preserving (AP) scheme for the Euler–Lorentz system. This scheme gives rise to both a consistent approximation of the Euler–Lorentz model when ε$\epsilon$ is finite and a consistent approximation of the drift limit when ε→0$\epsilon \to 0$. Above all, it does not require any constraint on the space and time-steps related to the small value of ε$\epsilon$. Numerical results are presented, which confirm the AP character of the scheme and its Asymptotic Stability.     

On positivity-preserving high order discontinuous Galerkin schemes for compressible Euler equations on rectangular meshes

We construct uniformly high order accurate discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes which preserve positivity of density and pressure for Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics. The same framework also applies to high order accurate finite volume (e.g. essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) or weighted ENO (WENO)) schemes. Motivated by Perthame and Shu (1996) [20] and Zhang and Shu (2010) [26], a general framework, for arbitrary order of accuracy, is established to construct a positivity preserving limiter for the finite volume and DG methods with first order Euler forward time discretization solving one-dimensional compressible Euler equations. The limiter can be proven to maintain high order accuracy and is easy to implement. Strong stability preserving (SSP) high order time discretizations will keep the positivity property. Following the idea in Zhang and Shu (2010) [26], we extend this framework to higher dimensions on rectangular meshes in a straightforward way. Numerical tests for the third order DG method are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the methods.     

Monoslope and multislope MUSCL methods for unstructured meshes

We present new MUSCL techniques associated with cell-centered finite volume method on triangular meshes. The first reconstruction consists in calculating one vectorial slope per control volume by a minimization procedure with respect to a prescribed stability condition. The second technique we propose is based on the computation of three scalar slopes per triangle (one per edge) still respecting some stability condition. The resulting algorithm provides a very simple scheme which is extensible to higher dimensional problems. Numerical approximations have been performed to obtain the convergence order for the advection scalar problem whereas we treat a nonlinear vectorial example, namely the Euler system, to show the capacity of the new MUSCL technique to deal with more complex situations.     

An explicit algorithm for imbedding solid boundaries in Cartesian grids for the reactive Euler equations

We present a local and point-wise scheme for imposing reflective boundary conditions to stationary internal boundaries for solving the reactive Euler equations on Cartesian grids. The scheme is presented in two and three dimensions and can run efficiently on parallel machines while still maintaining the same advantages over other methods for enforcing internal boundary conditions. Level sets are used to represent internal solid regions along with a new local node sorting algorithm that decouples internal boundary nodes by establishing their connectivity to other internal boundary nodes. This approach allows us to enforce boundary conditions via a direct procedure, removing the need to solve a coupled system of equations numerically. We examine the accuracy and fidelity of our internal boundary algorithm by simulating flows past various solid boundaries in two and three dimensions, showing good agreement between our numerical results and experimental data.     

A new class of gas-kinetic relaxation schemes for the compressible Euler equations

Starting from the gas-kinetic model, a new class of relaxation schemes for the Euler equations is presented. In contrast to the Riemann solver, these schemes provide a multidimensional dynamical gas evolution model, which combines both Lax-Wendroff and kinetic flux vector splitting schemes, and their coupling is based on the fact that a nonequilibrium state will evolve into an equilibrium state along with the increase of entropy. The numerical fluxes are constructed without getting into the details of the particle collisions. The results for many well-defined test cases are presented to indicate the robustness and accuracy of the current scheme.     

Similarity reductions and new nonlinear exact solutions for the 2D incompressible Euler equations

For the 2D and 3D Euler equations, their existing exact solutions are often in linear form with respect to variables x, y, z. In this paper, the Clarkson–Kruskal reduction method is applied to reduce the 2D incompressible Euler equations to a system of completely solvable ordinary equations, from which several novel nonlinear exact solutions with respect to the variables x and y are found.     

An evaluation of the FCT method for high-speed flows on structured overlapping grids

This study considers the development and assessment of a flux-corrected transport (FCT) algorithm for simulating high-speed flows on structured overlapping grids. This class of algorithm shows promise for solving some difficult highly-nonlinear problems where robustness and control of certain features, such as maintaining positive densities, is important. Complex, possibly moving, geometry is treated through the use of structured overlapping grids. Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is employed to ensure sharp resolution of discontinuities in an efficient manner. Improvements to the FCT algorithm are proposed for the treatment of strong rarefaction waves as well as rarefaction waves containing a sonic point. Simulation results are obtained for a set of test problems and the convergence characteristics are demonstrated and compared to a high-resolution Godunov method. The problems considered are an isolated shock, an isolated contact, a modified Sod shock tube problem, a two-shock Riemann problem, the Shu–Osher test problem, shock impingement on single cylinder, and irregular Mach reflection of a strong shock striking an inclined plane.     

The discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin method for one-dimensional compressible Euler equations in the Lagrangian coordinate

In this paper, a Petrov-Galerkin scheme named the Runge-Kutta control volume (RKCV) discontinuous finite element method is constructed to solve the one-dimensional compressible Euler equations in the Lagrangian coordinate. Its advantages include preservation of the local conservation and a high resolution. Compared with the Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) method, the RKCV method is easier to implement. Moreover, the advantages of the RKCV and the Lagrangian methods are combined in the new method. Several numerical examples are given to illustrate the accuracy and the reliability of the algorithm.     

Global regularity of the 4D restricted Euler equations

We are concerned with the critical threshold phenomena in the restricted Euler (RE) equations. Using the spectral and trace dynamics we identify the critical thresholds for the 3D and 4D restricted Euler equations. It is well known that the 3D RE solutions blow up. Projected on the 3-sphere, the set of initial eigenvalues which give rise to bounded stable solutions is reduced to a single point, which confirms that the 3D RE blowup is generic. In contrast, we identify a surprisingly rich set of the initial spectrum on the 4-sphere which yields global smooth solutions; thus, 4D regularity is generic.