Numerical simulation of free‐surface flow using the level‐set method with global mass correction

A new numerical method that couples the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with the global mass correction level‐set method for simulating fluid problems with free surfaces and interfaces is presented in this paper. The finite volume method is used to discretize Navier–Stokes equations with the two‐step projection method on a staggered Cartesian grid. The free‐surface flow problem is solved on a fixed grid in which the free surface is captured by the zero level set. Mass conservation is improved significantly by applying a global mass correction scheme, in a novel combination with third‐order essentially non‐oscillatory schemes and a five stage Runge–Kutta method, to accomplish advection and re‐distancing of the level‐set function. The coupled solver is applied to simulate interface change and flow field in four benchmark test cases: (1) shear flow; (2) dam break; (3) travelling and reflection of solitary wave and (4) solitary wave over a submerged object. The computational results are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions, experimental data and previous numerical simulations using a RANS‐VOF method. The simulations reveal some interesting free‐surface phenomena such as the free‐surface vortices, air entrapment and wave deformation over a submerged object. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical analysis on the propulsive performance and vortex shedding of fish‐like travelling wavy plate

Numerical analysis is carried out to investigate viscous flow over a travelling wavy plate undergoing lateral motion in the form of a streamwise travelling wave, which is similar to the backbone undulation of swimming fish. The two‐dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved using the finite element technique with the deforming‐spatial‐domain/stabilized space–time formulation. The objective of this study is to elucidate hydrodynamic features of flow structure and vortex shedding near the travelling wavy plate and to get into physical insights to the understanding of fish‐like swimming mechanisms in terms of drag reduction and optimal propulsive performance. The effects of some typical parameters, including the phase speed, amplitude, and relative wavelength of travelling wavy plate, on the flow structures, the forces, and the power consumption required for the propulsive motion of the plate are analysed. These results predicted by the present numerical analysis are well consistent with the available data obtained for the wave‐like swimming motion of live fish in nature. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Approximate solving method of shock for nonlinear disturbed coupled Schrödinger system

A class of nonlinear disturbed coupled Schrödinger systems is studied. The specific technique is used to relate the exact and approximate solutions. The corresponding typical coupled system is considered. An exact shock travelling solution is obtained by a mapping method. The travelling asymptotic solutions of the disturbed coupled Schrödinger system are then found with an approximate method.     

A simulation of free surface waves for incompressible two‐phase flows using a curvilinear level set formulation

A level set formulation in a generalized curvilinear coordinate is developed to simulate the free surface waves generated by moving bodies or the sloshing of fluid in a container. The Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations are modified to account for variable density and viscosity in two‐phase (i.e. water–air) fluid flow systems. A local level set method is used to update the level set function and a least square technique adopted to re‐initialize it at each time step. To assess the developed algorithm and its versatility, a selection of different fluid–structure interaction problems are examined, i.e. an oscillating flow in a two‐dimensional square tank, a breaking dam involving different density fluids, sloshing in a two‐dimensional rectangular tank and a Wigley ship hull travelling in calm water. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of a local MQ‐DQ‐based stencil adaptive method and its application to solve incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

In this paper, a local stencil adaptive method is presented, which is designed for solving computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems with curved boundaries accurately. A local multiquadric‐differential quadrature (MQ‐DQ) method is used to discretize the governing equations, taking advantage of its meshless nature. The present method bears the properties of both local MQ‐DQ method and local stencil adaptive method and is thus named the local MQ‐DQ‐based stencil adaptive method. Two test problems with curved boundaries are solved to investigate the performance of this solution‐adaptive method. The numerical results indicate that the proposed method is effective and efficient by combining the advantages of meshless property for complex geometries and local adaptation for accuracy improvement. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A parallel cell‐based DSMC method on unstructured adaptive meshes

A parallel DSMC method based on a cell‐based data structure is developed for the efficient simulation of rarefied gas flows on PC‐clusters. Parallel computation is made by decomposing the computational domain into several subdomains. Dynamic load balancing between processors is achieved based on the number of simulation particles and the number of cells allocated in each subdomain. Adjustment of cell size is also made through mesh adaptation for the improvement of solution accuracy and the efficient usage of meshes. Applications were made for a two‐dimensional supersonic leading‐edge flow, the axi‐symmetric Rothe's nozzle, and the open hollow cylinder flare flow for validation. It was found that the present method is an efficient tool for the simulation of rarefied gas flows on PC‐based parallel machines. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RCM‐TVD hybrid scheme for hyperbolic conservation laws

We describe a hybrid method for the solution of hyperbolic conservation laws. A third‐order total variation diminishing (TVD) finite difference scheme is conjugated with a random choice method (RCM) in a grid‐based adaptive way. An efficient multi‐resolution technique is used to detect the high gradient regions of the numerical solution in order to capture the shock with RCM while the smooth regions are computed with the more efficient TVD scheme. The hybrid scheme captures correctly the discontinuities of the solution and saves CPU time. Numerical experiments with one‐ and two‐dimensional problems are presented. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical study of particulate suspension flow through wavy‐walled channels

The particulate suspension flow in a channel whose walls describe a travelling wave motion is examined numerically. A perturbation method is employed and the primitive variables are expanded in a series with the wall amplitude as the perturbation parameter. The boundary conditions are applied at the mean surface of the channel and the first‐order perturbation quantities are numerically determined by solving the governing system of ordinary differential equations by shooting technique. The present approach does not impose any restriction on the Reynolds number of the flow and the wave number and frequency of the wavy‐walled channel, although it is limited by the linear analysis. The wall shear stress and the positions of flow separation and reattachment points are computed and the influence of the volume fraction density of the particles is examined. The variations of velocity and pressure of the particulate suspension flow with frequency of excitation are also presented. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multigrid third‐order least‐squares solution of Cauchy–Riemann equations on unstructured triangular grids

In this paper, a multigrid algorithm is developed for the third‐order accurate solution of Cauchy–Riemann equations discretized in the cell‐vertex finite‐volume fashion: the solution values stored at vertices and the residuals defined on triangular elements. On triangular grids, this results in a highly overdetermined problem, and therefore we consider its solution that minimizes the residuals in the least‐squares norm. The standard second‐order least‐squares scheme is extended to third‐order by adding a high‐order correction term in the residual. The resulting high‐order method is shown to give sufficiently accurate solutions on relatively coarse grids. Combined with a multigrid technique, the method then becomes a highly accurate and efficient solver. We present some results to demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency, including both structured and unstructured triangular grids. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Travelling Breathers in Klein-Gordon Lattices as Homoclinic Orbits to <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">p</Emphasis>-Tori

Klein-Gordon chains are one-dimensional lattices of nonlinear oscillators in an anharmonic on-site potential, linearly coupled with their first neighbors. In this paper, we study the existence in such networks of spatially localized solutions, which appear time periodic in a referential in translation at constant velocity. These solutions are called travelling breathers. In the case of travelling wave solutions, the existence of exact solutions has been obtained by Iooss and Kirchgässner. Formal multiscale expansions have been used by Remoissenet to derive approximate solutions of travelling breathers in the form of modulated plane waves. James and Sire have studied the existence of specific travelling breather solutions, consisting in pulsating travelling waves which are exactly translated of 2 lattice sites after a fixed propagation time T. In this paper, we generalize this approach to pulsating travelling waves which are exactly translated of p≥ 3 sites after a given time T p being arbitrary. By formulating the problem as a dynamical system, one is able to reduce the system locally to a finite dimensional set of ordinary differential equations (ODE), whose dimension depends on the parameter values of the problem. We prove that the principal part of this system of ODE admits homoclinic connections to p-tori under general conditions on the potential. One can obtain leading order approximations of these homoclinic connections and these orbits should correspond, for the oscillator chain, to small amplitude travelling breather solutions superposed on an exponentially small quasi-periodic tail.     

An accurate and efficient semi‐implicit method for section‐averaged free‐surface flow modelling

An accurate, efficient and robust numerical method for the solution of the section‐averaged De St. Venant equations of open channel flow is presented and discussed. The method consists in a semi‐implicit, finite‐volume discretization of the continuity equation capable to deal with arbitrary cross‐section geometry and in a semi‐implicit, finite‐difference discretization of the momentum equation. By using a proper semi‐Lagrangian discretization of the momentum equation, a highly efficient scheme that is particularly suitable for subcritical regimes is derived. Accurate solutions are obtained in all regimes, except in presence of strong unsteady shocks as in dam‐break cases. By using a suitable upwind, Eulerian discretization of the same equation, instead, a scheme capable of describing accurately also unsteady shocks can be obtained, although this scheme requires to comply with a more restrictive stability condition. The formulation of the two approaches allows a unified implementation and an easy switch between the two. The code is verified in a wide range of idealized test cases, highlighting its accuracy and efficiency characteristics, especially for long time range simulations of subcritical river flow. Finally, a model validation on field data is presented, concerning simulations of a flooding event of the Adige river. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fast Godunov method for the water‐hammer problem

An efficient Godunov‐type numerical method with second‐order accuracy was developed to simulate the water‐hammer problem in piping. The exact solutions of the Riemann problem were analysed and illustrated on the intriguing solution diagram by properly introducing dimensionless variables within reasonably practical ranges. Based on the solution diagram, an efficient fast Riemann solver was also developed. Moreover, small perturbation analysis was performed to demonstrate the relations between the primitive variables, velocity and pressure, for the Riemann problem. The typical shock‐tube problem and the water‐hammer problem were implemented as sample ones to test the numerical method. It was shown that the present numerical method incorporated with Van Leer's flux limiter is a promising one to simulate fluid transient problem for piping in the present study. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimization of heat‐transfer rate into time‐periodic two‐dimensional Stokes flows

The periodic boundary displacement protocol leading to the optimum wall‐to‐fluid heat‐transfer rate, or to the most efficient mixing rate, in 2‐D annular Stokes flows is determined by calculating the steady periodic velocity and temperature fields. To obtain the steady periodic state one usually solves the dynamical system obtained after the spatial coordinates have been discretized. Here, we calculate the steady periodic state using an implicit method based on the discretization of the time coordinate over a period and the asymptotic regime is enforced by the periodicity condition in the computed temperature field. The obtained system of equations is solved using a Newton‐type iterative algorithm with invariant Jacobian. At each iteration step, the sparse linearized system is solved using a multi‐grid algebraic technique of rapid convergence. From a computational point of view and for the problem considered here, this method is an order of magnitude faster than the one based on a spatial discretization. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fractional two‐step implicit algorithm using curvilinear collected grids

An efficient fractional two‐step implicit algorithm is reported to simulate incompressible fluid flows in a boundary‐fitted curvilinear collocated grid system. Using the finite volume method, the convection terms are discretized by the high‐accuracy Roe's scheme to minimize numerical diffusion. An implicitness coefficient Π is introduced to accelerate the rate of convergence. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm links the fractional step method to the pressure correction procedure, and the SIMPLEC method could be considered as a special case of the fractional two‐step implicit algorithm (when Π=1). The proposed algorithm is applicable to unsteady flows and steady flows. Three benchmark two‐dimensional laminar flows are tested to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Performance is measured by sensitivity analyses of the efficiency, accuracy, grid density, grid skewness and Reynolds number on the solutions. Results show that the model is efficient and robust. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

GPU‐accelerated direct numerical simulations of decaying compressible turbulence employing a GKM‐based solver

Gas Kinetic Method‐based flow solvers have become popular in recent years owing to their robustness in simulating high Mach number compressible flows. We evaluate the performance of the newly developed analytical gas kinetic method (AGKM) by Xuan et al. in performing direct numerical simulation of canonical compressible turbulent flow on graphical processing unit (GPU)s. We find that for a range of turbulent Mach numbers, AGKM results shows excellent agreement with high order accurate results obtained with traditional Navier–Stokes solvers in terms of key turbulence statistics. Further, AGKM is found to be more efficient as compared with the traditional gas kinetic method for GPU implementation. We present a brief overview of the optimizations performed on NVIDIA K20 GPU and show that GPU optimizations boost the speedup up‐to 40x as compared with single core CPU computations. Hence, AGKM can be used as an efficient method for performing fast and accurate direct numerical simulations of compressible turbulent flows on simple GPU‐based workstations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pseudo‐characteristic formulation and dynamic boundary conditions for computational aeroacoustics

The present paper deals with the use of the pseudo‐characteristic formulation of the Navier–Stokes and Euler equations recently introduced by Sesterhenn (Comput. Fluid. 2001; 30 :37–67) for the simulation of acoustic wave propagation. The emphasis is put on the formulation of an efficient method on structured curvilinear grids, along with the definition and implementation of efficient boundary conditions. The cases of inflow, outflow, rigid/compliant walls and walls with prescribed impedance are addressed. The proposed boundary conditions are assessed on generic cases. The pseudo‐characteristic formulation enables a straightforward and optimal use of high‐order upwind dispersion‐relation‐preserving schemes, yielding an efficient method. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the treatment of transient area variation in 1D discontinuous Galerkin simulations of train‐induced pressure waves in tunnels

To simulate the pressure wave generated by a train travelling through a tunnel, we implement a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for the solution of the one‐dimensional equations of variable area flow. This formulation uses a spatial discretisation via Legendre polynomials of arbitrary degree, and the resulting semi‐discrete system is integrated using an explicit Runge–Kutta scheme. A simulation of subsonic steady flow in a nozzle shows that the scheme produces stable solutions, without the need for artificial dissipation, and that its performance is optimal for polynomial degrees between 5 and 7. However, when dealing with an unsteady area, we report the presence of numerical oscillations that are not due to the steep pressure fronts in the flow but rather to the projection of a moving area, with piecewise continuous derivatives onto a fixed grid. We propose a reformulation of the DG method to eliminate these oscillations that, put in simple terms, amount to splitting the integrals where the derivatives of the cross‐sectional area are discontinuous into subintegrals where they are continuous. The resulting method does not exhibit oscillations, and it is applied here to two practical cases involving train‐induced pressure waves in a tunnel. The first application is a validation of the DG method through comparison of its computational results with pressure data measured during transit at the Patchway tunnel near Bristol (UK). The second application is a study of the influence of the nose shape and length on the pressure wave gradients responsible for sonic boom at tunnel exit portals to show that the proposed modification is able to deal with realistic train shapes. Copyright © 2012 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.     

Calculation of three‐dimensional turbulent flow with a finite volume multigrid method

A numerical method for the efficient calculation of three‐dimensional incompressible turbulent flow in curvilinear co‐ordinates is presented. The mathematical model consists of the Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations and the k–ε turbulence model. The numerical method is based on the SIMPLE pressure‐correction algorithm with finite volume discretization in curvilinear co‐ordinates. To accelerate the convergence of the solution method a full approximation scheme‐full multigrid (FAS‐FMG) method is utilized. The solution of the k–ε transport equations is embedded in the multigrid iteration. The improved convergence characteristic of the multigrid method is demonstrated by means of several calculations of three‐dimensional flow cases. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fourth‐order compact formulation of Navier–Stokes equations and driven cavity flow at high Reynolds numbers

A new fourth‐order compact formulation for the steady 2‐D incompressible Navier–Stokes equations is presented. The formulation is in the same form of the Navier–Stokes equations such that any numerical method that solve the Navier–Stokes equations can easily be applied to this fourth‐order compact formulation. In particular, in this work the formulation is solved with an efficient numerical method that requires the solution of tridiagonal systems using a fine grid mesh of 601 × 601. Using this formulation, the steady 2‐D incompressible flow in a driven cavity is solved up to Reynolds number with Re = 20 000 fourth‐order spatial accuracy. Detailed solutions are presented. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.