An analytical interface reconstruction algorithm in the PLIC‐VOF method for 2D polygonal unstructured meshes

Piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) schemes have been extensively employed in the volume‐of‐fluid (VOF) method for interface capturing in numerical simulations of multiphase flows. Polygonal unstructured meshes are often adopted because of their geometric flexibility and superiority in gradient calculation. An analytical interface reconstruction algorithm in the PLIC‐VOF method for arbitrary convex polygonal cells has been proposed in this study. The line interface at a given orientation within a polygonal cell is located by an analytical technique. It has been tested successfully for four different geometric shapes that are common in polygonal meshes. The computational efficiency of the present algorithm has been compared with several published schemes in the literature. The proposed algorithm has been shown to yield higher accuracy with reduction in computational complexity. A numerical simulation of a dam‐breaking problem has been performed using the proposed analytical PLIC technique on polygonal meshes. The results are in good agreement with experimental data available in the literature, which serves as a demonstration of its performance in a real multiphase flow.     

三维VOF方法—PLIC3D算法研究

本文研究的目的在于，使用分段线性PLIC(Piecewise Linear Interface Construction)方式构造界面，推导三维空间中的VOF(Volume of F1uid)算法PLIC3D，给出详尽的计算公式和过程。然后，用球形流体匀速运动作为分析PLIC3D算法的数值算例，比较了PLIC3D和分段常数PCIC(Piecewise Constant Interface Construction)构造法中DA3D(Donor—Acceptor in 3—Dimension)在三维空间计算界面的差别。结果显示PLIC3D优于DA3D，它能够更好地保持流体在平移运动中的形状，证实了PLIC方式的空间构造精度高于PCIC的结论。最后，利用PLIC3D计算自由面，模拟容器中流体泄漏问题，得到了其液面形状变化和速度场。     

A new volume of fluid method in three dimensions—Part II: Piecewise‐planar interface reconstruction with cubic‐Bézier fit

A new interface reconstruction method in 3D is presented. The method involves a conservative level‐contour reconstruction coupled to a cubic‐Bézier interpolation. The use of the proposed piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) reconstruction scheme coupled to a multidimensional time integration provides solutions of second‐order spatial and temporal accuracy. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed reconstruction algorithm are demonstrated through several tests, whose results are compared with those obtained with other recently proposed methods. An overall improvement in accuracy with respect to other recent methods has been achieved, along with a substantial reduction in the central processing unit time required. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A numerical continuous model for the hydrodynamics of fluid particle systems

In order to understand the hydrodynamic interactions that can appear in a fluid particle motion, an original method based on the equations governing the motion of two immiscible fluids has been developed. These momentum equations are solved for both the fluid and solid phases. The solid phase is assumed to be a fluid phase with physical properties, such as its behaviour can be assimilated to that of pseudo‐rigid particles. The only unknowns are the velocity and the pressure defined in both phases. The unsteady two‐dimensional momentum equations are solved by using a staggered finite volume formulation and a projection method. The transport of each particle is solved by using a second‐order explicit scheme. The physical model and the numerical method are presented, and the method is validated through experimental measurements and numerical results concerning the flow around a circular cylinder. Good agreement is observed in most cases. The method is then applied to study the trajectory of one settling particle initially off‐centred between two parallel walls and the corresponding wake effects. Different particle trajectories related to particulate Reynolds numbers are presented and commented. A two‐body interaction problem is investigated too. This method allows the simulation of the transport of particles in a dilute suspension in reasonable time. One of the important features of this method is the computational cost that scales linearly with the number of particles. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stabilisation of AMG solvers for saddle‐point stokes problems

When a block factorisation is used to precondition the saddle‐point equations of the discrete Stokes problem, the stability that this gives for the relaxation of residual errors may not be conserved in the coarse‐grid approximations (CGA) of algebraic multi‐grid (AMG) solvers. If the same first‐order interpolation is used in the inter‐grid transfer operators for the scalar and the vector fields, the conditioning degrades with each coarsening step until eventually a critical coarsening is reached beyond which residual errors are no longer damped and will become divergent with any further coarsening. It is shown that by introducing the same block pre‐conditioner as an integral part of the coarsening algorithm, stable smoothing can be maintained at all levels of the CGA. The pre‐conditioning need only be applied at preselected grid levels, one immediately before the critical threshold and others beyond that level if required. Excessive complexity in the CGA is thereby avoided. The method is purely algebraic and may be used for both classical AMG solvers and for smoothed‐aggregation AMG solvers. It should be applicable to other coupled vector and scalar fields in science and engineering that involve second‐order (block‐diagonal) and first‐order (block‐off‐diagonal) discrete difference operators. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A convergence accelerator of a linear system of equations based upon the power method

This paper considers the convergence rate of an iterative numerical scheme as a method for accelerating at the post‐processor stage. The methodology adapted here is: (1) residual eigenmodes included in the origin of the convex hull are eliminated; (2) remaining residual terms are smoothed away by the main convergence algorithm. For this purpose, the polynomial matrix approach is employed for deriving the characteristic equation by two different methods. The first method is based on vector scaling and the second is based on the normal equations approach. The input for both methods is the solution difference between two consecutive iteration/cycle levels obtained from the main program. The singular value decomposition was employed for both methods due to the ill‐conditioned structure of the matrices. The use of the explicit form of the Richardson extrapolation in the present work overrules the need to employ the Richardson iteration with a Leja ordering. The performance of these methods was compared with the GMRES algorithm for three representative problems: two‐dimensional boundary value problem using the Laplace equation, three‐dimensional multi‐grid, potential solution over a sphere and the one‐dimensional steady state Burger equation. In all three examples both methods have the same rate of convergence, or better, as that of the GMRES method in terms of computer operational count. However, in terms of storage requirements, the method based upon vector scaling has a significant advantage over the normal equations approach as well as the GMRES method, in which only one vector of the N grid‐points is required. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parallel computation of viscous incompressible flows using Godunov‐projection method on overlapping grids

The Godunov‐projection method is implemented on a system of overlapping structured grids for solving the time‐dependent incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. This projection method uses a second‐order fractional step scheme in which the momentum equation is solved to obtain the intermediate velocity field which is then projected on to the space of divergence‐free vector fields. The Godunov procedure is applied to estimate the non‐linear convective term in order to provide a robust discretization of this terms at high Reynolds number. In order to obtain the pressure field, a separate procedure is applied in this modified Godunov‐projection method, where the pressure Poisson equation is solved. Overlapping grids are used to discretize the flow domain, as they offer the flexibility of simplifying the grid generation around complex geometrical domains. This combination of projection method and overlapping grid is also parallelized and reasonable parallel efficiency is achieved. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the performance of this combination of the Godunov‐projection method and the overlapping grid. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive subdivision piecewise linear interface calculation (ASPLIC) for 2D multi‐material hydrodynamic simulation codes

In this work, we propose an adaptive subdivision piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) for 2D multimaterial hydrodynamic simulation codes. Classical volume‐of‐fluid PLIC technique uses one line segment and one given normal to separate two materials. Unfortunately, these paradigms are not sufficient when filaments occur, leading to the creation of flotsam and jetsam. We propose to detect such situations and to split the computational mixed cell into reconstruction subzones. Within these subzones, one computes a so‐called subgradient using an incomplete stencil of neighbors, and the material is distributed in these subzones. Given subzone volume fraction and the subgradient, one computes one line segment using classical PLIC method, leading to a modified PLIC method for subscale material entity. The subdivision procedure relies on a splitting point, which is chosen as a specific information about the relative location of the filament in the cell, leading to an adaptive subdivision for PLIC reconstructions. Numerical tests are carried out in a 2D Lagrange + Remap multimaterial hydrodynamics Eulerian code. Static and dynamic filaments and fragments are simulated in advection or stretched in vortex‐like motion. The full hydrodynamics equations are solved on a more realistic test (shock‐bubble impact). Results show that our approach supplements classical PLIC method for situations when filaments and fragments occur. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A time‐accurate pseudo‐compressibility approach based on an unstructured hybrid finite volume technique applied to unsteady turbulent premixed flame propagation

A preconditioning approach based on the artificial compressibility formulation is extended to solve the governing equations for unsteady turbulent reactive flows with heat release, at low Mach numbers, on an unstructured hybrid grid context. Premixed reactants are considered and a flamelet approach for combustion modelling is adopted using a continuous quenched mean reaction rate. An overlapped cell‐vertex finite volume method is adopted as a discretisation scheme. Artificial dissipation terms for hybrid grids are explicitly added to ensure a stable, discretised set of equations. A second‐order, explicit, hybrid Runge–Kutta scheme is applied for the time marching in pseudo‐time. A time derivative of the dependent variable is added to recover the time accuracy of the preconditioned set of equations. This derivative is discretised by an implicit, second‐order scheme. The resulting scheme is applied to the calculation of an infinite planar (one‐dimensional) turbulent premixed flame propagating freely in reactants whose turbulence is supposed to be frozen, homogeneous and isotropic. The accuracy of the results obtained with the proposed method proves to be excellent when compared to the data available in the literature. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mass‐conservative staggered immersed boundary model for solving the shallow water equations on complex geometries

In this work, an approach is proposed for solving the 3D shallow water equations with embedded boundaries that are not aligned with the underlying horizontal Cartesian grid. A hybrid cut‐cell/ghost‐cell method is used together with a direction‐splitting implicit solver: Ghost cells are used for the momentum equations in order to prescribe the correct boundary condition at the immersed boundary, while cut cells are used in the continuity equation in order to conserve mass. The resulting scheme is robust, does not suffer any time step limitation for small cut cells, and conserves fluid mass up to machine precision. Moreover, the solver displays a second‐order spatial accuracy, both globally and locally. Comparisons with analytical solutions and reference numerical solutions on curvilinear grids confirm the quality of the method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical simulation of unsteady multidimensional free surface motions by level set method

This paper presents a numerical method that couples the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with the level set method in a curvilinear co‐ordinate system for study of free surface flows. The finite volume method is used to discretize the governing equations on a non‐staggered grid with a four‐step fractional step method. The free surface flow problem is converted into a two‐phase flow system on a fixed grid in which the free surface is implicitly captured by the zero level set. We compare different numerical schemes for advection of the level set function in a generalized curvilinear format, including the third order quadratic upwind interpolation for convective kinematics (QUICK) scheme, and the second and third order essentially non‐oscillatory (ENO) schemes. The level set equations of evolution and reinitialization are validated with benchmark cases, e.g. a stationary circle, a rotating slotted disk and stretching of a circular fluid element. The coupled system is then applied to a travelling solitary wave, and two‐ and three‐dimensional dam breaking problems. Some interesting free surface phenomena are revealed by the computational results, such as, the large free surface vortices, air entrapment and splashing of the water surge front. The computational results are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions and experimental data, where they are available. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Third‐order Cartesian overset mesh adaptation method for solving steady compressible flows

A third‐order mesh generation and adaptation method is presented for solving the steady compressible Euler equations. For interior points, a third‐order scheme is used on Cartesian and curvilinear meshes. Concerning the mesh adaptation, the method of Meakin is also extended to third order. The accuracy of the new overset mesh adaptation method is demonstrated by a grid convergence study for 2‐D inviscid model problems and results are compared with a second‐order method. Finally, the method is applied to the computation of an inviscid 3‐D flow around a hovering blade of the ONERA 7A helicopter rotor exhibiting an improvement in the wake capture. With a 7 million point mesh, the tip vortex can be followed for more than three rotor revolutions with the third‐order method. The CPU time needed for this calculation is only 3% higher than with a conventional second‐order method. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive cut‐cell method for environmental fluid mechanics

In this work we present a numerical method for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in an environmental fluid mechanics context. The method is designed for the study of environmental flows that are multiscale, incompressible, variable‐density, and within arbitrarily complex and possibly anisotropic domains. The method is new because in this context we couple the embedded‐boundary (or cut‐cell) method for complex geometry with block‐structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) while maintaining conservation and second‐order accuracy. The accurate simulation of variable‐density fluids necessitates special care in formulating projection methods. This variable‐density formulation is well known for incompressible flows in unit‐aspect ratio domains, without AMR, and without complex geometry, but here we carefully present a new method that addresses the intersection of these issues. The methodology is based on a second‐order‐accurate projection method with high‐order‐accurate Godunov finite‐differencing, including slope limiting and a stable differencing of the nonlinear convection terms. The finite‐volume AMR discretizations are based on two‐way flux matching at refinement boundaries to obtain a conservative method that is second‐order accurate in solution error. The control volumes are formed by the intersection of the irregular embedded boundary with Cartesian grid cells. Unlike typical discretization methods, these control volumes naturally fit within parallelizable, disjoint‐block data structures, and permit dynamic AMR coarsening and refinement as the simulation progresses. We present two‐ and three‐dimensional numerical examples to illustrate the accuracy of the method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implementation of high‐order compact finite‐difference method to parabolized Navier–Stokes schemes

The numerical solution to the parabolized Navier–Stokes (PNS) and globally iterated PNS (IPNS) equations for accurate computation of hypersonic axisymmetric flowfields is obtained by using the fourth‐order compact finite‐difference method. The PNS and IPNS equations in the general curvilinear coordinates are solved by using the implicit finite‐difference algorithm of Beam and Warming type with a high‐order compact accuracy. A shock‐fitting procedure is utilized in both compact PNS and IPNS schemes to obtain accurate solutions in the vicinity of the shock. The main advantage of the present formulation is that the basic flow variables and their first and second derivatives are simultaneously computed with the fourth‐order accuracy. The computations are carried out for a benchmark case: hypersonic axisymmetric flow over a blunt cone at Mach 8. A sensitivity study is performed for the basic flowfield, including profiles and their derivatives obtained from the fourth‐order compact PNS and IPNS solutions, and the effects of grid size and numerical dissipation term used are discussed. The present results for the flowfield variables and also their derivatives are compared with those of other basic flow models to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. The present work represents the first known application of a high‐order compact finite‐difference method to the PNS schemes, which are computationally more efficient than Navier–Stokes solutions. Copyright © 2008 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 virtual boundary method with improved computational efficiency using a multi‐grid method

The flow around spherical, solid objects is considered. The boundary conditions on the solid boundaries have been applied by replacing the boundary with a surface force distribution on the surface, such that the required boundary conditions are satisfied. The velocity on the boundary is determined by extrapolation from the flow field. The source terms are determined iteratively, as part of the solution. They are then averaged and are smoothed out to nearby computational grid points. A multi‐grid scheme has been used to enhance the computational efficiency of the solution of the force equations. The method has been evaluated for flow around both moving and stationary spherical objects at very low and intermediate Reynolds numbers. The results shows a second order accuracy of the method both at creeping flow and at Re=100. The multi‐grid scheme is shown to enhance the convergence rate up to a factor 10 as compared to single grid approach. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An overlapping control volume method for the Navier–Stokes equations on non‐staggered grids

An algorithm, based on the overlapping control volume (OCV) method, for the solution of the steady and unsteady two‐dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in complex geometry is presented. The primitive variable formulation is solved on a non‐staggered grid arrangement. The problem of pressure–velocity decoupling is circumvented by using momentum interpolation. The accuracy and effectiveness of the method is established by solving five steady state and one unsteady test problems. The numerical solutions obtained using the technique are in good agreement with the analytical and benchmark solutions available in the literature. On uniform grids, the method gives second‐order accuracy for both diffusion‐ and convection‐dominated flows. There is little loss of accuracy on grids that are moderately non‐orthogonal. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order PIC method for advection‐dominated flow with application to shallow water waves

A hybrid Eulerian‐Lagrangian particle‐in‐cell–type numerical method is developed for the solution of advection‐dominated flow problems. Particular attention is given over to the high‐order transfer of flow properties from the particles to the grid. For smooth flows, the method presented is of formal high‐order accuracy in space. The method is applied to solve the nonlinear shallow water equations resulting in a new, and novel, shock capturing shallow water solver. The approach is able to simulate complex shallow water flows, which can contain an arbitrary number of discontinuities. Both trivial and nontrivial bottom topography is considered, and it is shown that the new scheme is inherently well balanced, exactly satisfying the ‐property. The scheme is verified against several one‐dimensional benchmark shallow water problems. These include cases that involve transcritical flow regimes, shock waves, and nontrivial bathymetry. In all the test cases presented, very good results are obtained.     

A structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid‐based model for the shallow water equations

In large‐scale shallow flow simulations, local high‐resolution predictions are often required in order to reduce the computational cost without losing the accuracy of the solution. This is normally achieved by solving the governing equations on grids refined only to those areas of interest. Grids with varying resolution can be generated by different approaches, e.g. nesting methods, patching algorithms and adaptive unstructured or quadtree gridding techniques. This work presents a new structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid system as an alternative to the existing approaches to provide local high‐resolution mesh. On generating a structured but non‐uniform Cartesian grid, the whole computational domain is first discretized using a coarse background grid. Local refinement is then achieved by directly allocating a specific subdivision level to each background grid cell. The neighbour information is specified by simple mathematical relationships and no explicit storage is needed. Hence, the structured property of the uniform grid is maintained. After employing some simple interpolation formulae, the governing shallow water equations are solved using a second‐order finite volume Godunov‐type scheme in a similar way as that on a uniform grid. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.