A compound adaptive approach to degenerate nonlinear quenching problems

Quenching phenomena play important roles in both steady and unsteady combustion processes. This article studies a compound finite difference method for solving a nonlinear degenerate combustion model problem. The approach combines procedures of semidiscretization, adaptive ODE solver, and highly stable rational approximation for handling the spatial degeneracy and quenching singularity involved. A second‐order adaptive scheme is constructed, which provides monotone convergence of the numerical solution and direct computations of critical quenching values. It has a simple, yet accurate and reliable, structure and is easy to use. We further demonstrate advantages of the scheme by comparing it to existing algorithms. Numerical examples are presented to further strengthen our results. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 15: 29–47, 1999     

Numerical solution of the optimal boundary control of transverse vibrations of a beam

Boundary control is an effective means for suppressing excessive structural vibrations. By introducing a quadratic index of performance in terms of displacement and velocity, as well as the control force, and an adjoint problem, it is possible to determine the optimal control. This optimal control is expressed in terms of the adjoint variable by utilizing a maximum principle. With the optimal control applied, the determination of the corresponding displacement and velocity is reduced to solving a set of partial differential equations involving the state variable, as well as the adjoint variable, subject to boundary, initial, and terminal conditions. The set of equations may not be separable and analytical solutions may only be found in special cases. Furthermore, the computational effort to determine an analytic solution may also be excessive. Herein a numerical algorithm is presented, which easily solves the optimal boundary control problem in the space‐time domain. An example of a continuous system is analyzed. This is the case of the vibrating cantilever beam. Using a finite element recurrence scheme, numerical solutions are obtained, which compare the behavior of the controlled and uncontrolled systems. Also, the analytic solution to the problem is compared with the results obtained using the numerical scheme presented. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 15: 558–568, 1999     

Compact finite difference schemes on non‐uniform meshes. Application to direct numerical simulations of compressible flows

In this paper, the development of a fourth‐ (respectively third‐) order compact scheme for the approximation of first (respectively second) derivatives on non‐uniform meshes is studied. A full inclusion of metrics in the coefficients of the compact scheme is proposed, instead of methods using Jacobian transformation. In the second part, an analysis of the numerical scheme is presented. A numerical analysis of truncation errors, a Fourier analysis completed by stability calculations in terms of both semi‐ and fully discrete eigenvalue problems are presented. In those eigenvalue problems, the pure convection equation for the first derivative, and the pure diffusion equation for the second derivative are considered. The last part of this paper is dedicated to an application of the numerical method to the simulation of a compressible flow requiring variable mesh size: the direct numerical simulation of compressible turbulent channel flow. Present results are compared with both experimental and other numerical (DNS) data in the literature. The effects of compressibility and acoustic waves on the turbulent flow structure are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computational study of curved shock–vortex interaction

The interaction between a curved shock wave and a compressible vortex is numerically investigated. The investigation concentrates on the local deformation of the shock structure due to the shock–vortex interaction. The essentially non‐oscillatory (ENO) scheme is used to solve the unsteady two‐dimensional Euler equations. A curved shock wave is obtained by the diffraction of an initially planar shock wave around a right‐angled corner and then allowed to interact with a strong compressible vortex superimposed on the flow. The same vortex affects the shock wave differently depending on the placement of the vortex because of the varying strength of the shock wave. This effect could range from a non‐symmetric deformation of the shock wave to a local disruption in the shock structure depending on the strength of the shock wave in the interaction region. This process leading to a local disruption in the shock structure is analyzed in detail. It is shown that such a disruption in the shock structure can be predicted by simple one‐dimensional considerations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explicit finite volume non‐oscillatory schemes for 2D transient free‐surface flows

A class of high‐resolution non‐oscillatory shock‐capturing Roe, TVD and ENO explicit schemes in finite volume approach are presented for the computation of 2D unsteady rapidly varied open channel flows. In order to apply these schemes to simulate the hydraulic phenomena in field, the Strang‐type operator splitting technique is adopted to treat the flow with bottom slope and friction terms. Verifications of the proposed schemes are made by comparison with analytical solutions or experimental data, and very good agreements are obtained. To illustrate the efficiency and stability of the present algorithms, four typical problems of rapidly varied flows are solved and the results of different schemes are compared. It is demonstrated that the proposed method is accurate, robust and highly stable even in the flows with very strong discontinuites, which need no tuning of any adjustable parameter, such as artificial viscosity coefficient, as other methods do, and is a reliable mathematical modeling for 2D practical hydraulic engineering applications. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AN ACCURATE FINITE DIFFERENCE SCHEME FOR SOLVING CONVECTION-DOMINATED DIFFUSION EQUATIONS

Approximating convection-dominated diffusion equations requires a very accurate scheme for the convection term. The most famous is the method of backward characteristics, which is very precise when a good interpolation procedure is used. However, this method is difficult to implement in 2D or 3D. The goal of this paper is to show that it is possible to construct finite difference schemes almost as accurate as the method of characteristics. Starting from a family of second- and third- order Lax–Wendroff-type schemes, a TVD and L^∞- stable scheme that is easy to implement in higher dimensions is constructed. Numerical tests are performed on various model problems whose solution is known and on classical problems. Comparisons with some other limiter schemes and the method of characteristics are discussed. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multidomain implicit numerical scheme

A multidomain method for the solution of elliptic CFD problems with an ADI scheme is described. Two methods of treatment of internal boundary conditions for ADI functions are discussed, namely an explicit and a semi‒implicit method. Stability conditions for the proposed methods are derived theoretically. The semi‒implicit scheme is more stable than the explicit scheme, leading to improved numerical efficiency for multidomain computations. Numerical computations for a linear convection-diffusion equation, for buoyancy‒driven recirculating flow in a square cavity and for turbulent flow in a square duct confirmed the theoretical results. Computer runs of the multidomain code in a distributed memory multiprocessor system were successful and efficient and produced reliable results. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An operator splitting algorithm for the three-dimensional advection–diffusion equation

Operator splitting algorithms are frequently used for solving the advection–diffusion equation, especially to deal with advection dominated transport problems. In this paper an operator splitting algorithm for the three-dimensional advection–diffusion equation is presented. The algorithm represents a second-order-accurate adaptation of the Holly and Preissmann scheme for three-dimensional problems. The governing equation is split into an advection equation and a diffusion equation, and they are solved by a backward method of characteristics and a finite element method, respectively. The Hermite interpolation function is used for interpolation of concentration in the advection step. The spatial gradients of concentration in the Hermite interpolation are obtained by solving equations for concentration gradients in the advection step. To make the composite algorithm efficient, only three equations for first-order concentration derivatives are solved in the diffusion step of computation. The higher-order spatial concentration gradients, necessary to advance the solution in a computational cycle, are obtained by numerical differentiations based on the available information. The simulation characteristics and accuracy of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated by several advection dominated transport problems. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF CRANK-NICOLSON SCHEME FOR THE ALLEN-CAHN EQUATION

We consider numerical methods to solve the Allen-Cahn equation using the second-order Crank-Nicolson scheme in time and the second-order central difference approach in space.The existence of the finite difference solution is proved with the help of Browder fixed point theorem.The difference scheme is showed to be unconditionally convergent in L∞ norm by constructing an auxiliary Lipschitz continuous function.Based on this result,it is demonstrated that the difference scheme preserves the maximum principle without any restrictions on spatial step size and temporal step size.The numerical experiments also verify the reliability of the method.     

THE PARALLEL BLOCK ADAPTIVE MULTIGRID METHOD FOR THE IMPLICIT SOLUTION OF THE EULER EQUATIONS

A method capable of solving very fast and robust complex non-linear systems of equations is presented. The block adaptive multigrid (BAM) method combines mesh adaptive techniques with multigrid and domain decomposition methods. The overall method is based on the FAS multigrid, but instead of using global grids, locally enriched subgrids are also employed in regions where excessive solution errors are encountered. The final mesh is a composite grid with uniform rectangular subgrids of various mesh densities. The regions where finer grid resolution is necessary are detected using an estimation of the solution error by comparing solutions between grid levels. Furthermore, an alternative domain decomposition strategy has been developed to take advantage of parallel computing machines. The proposed method has been applied to an implicit upwind Euler code (EuFlex) for the solution of complex transonic flows around aerofoils. The efficiency and robustness of the BAM method are demonstrated for two popular inviscid test cases. Up to 19-fold acceleration with respect to the single-grid solution has been achieved, but a further twofold speed-up is possible on four-processor parallel computers.