Performance of under-resolved two-dimensional incompressible flow simulations, II

Journal Article · Mon Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1997 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1997.5843· OSTI ID:613746

Minion, M L ^[1]; Brown, D L ^[2]

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1. Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)

This paper presents a study of the behavior of several difference approximations for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations as a function of the computational mesh resolution. In particular, the under-resolved case is considered. The methods considered include a Godunov projection method, a primitive variable ENO method, an upwind vorticity stream-function method, centered difference methods of both a pressure-Poisson and vorticity stream-function formulation. and a pseudospectral method. It is demonstrated that all these methods produce spurious, nonphysical vortices of the type described by Brown and Minion for a Godunov projection method when the flow is sufficiently under-resolved. The occurrence of these artifacts appears to be due to a nonlinear effect in which the truncation error of the difference method initiates a vortex instability in the computed flow. The implications of this study for adaptive mesh refinement strategies are also discussed. 29 refs., 14 figs., 2 tabs.

• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36; FG02-92ER25139; AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 613746
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 138; ISSN JCTPAH; ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FLOW MODELS
INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW
MESH GENERATION
NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS