skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: An upwind nodal integral method for incompressible fluid flow

Journal Article · · Nuclear Science and Engineering; (United States)
OSTI ID:6521038
 [1];  [2]
  1. Studsvik of America, Inc., Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
  2. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

An upwind nodal solution method is developed for the steady, two-dimensional flow of an incompressible fluid. The formulation is based on the nodal integral method, which uses transverse integrations, analytical solutions of the one-dimensional averaged equations, and node-averaged uniqueness constraints to derive the discretized nodal equations. The derivation introduces an exponential upwind bias by retaining the streamwise convection term in the homogeneous part of the transverse-integrated convection-diffusion equation. The method is adapted to the stream function-vorticity form of the Navier-Stokes equations, which are solved over a nonstaggered nodal mesh. A special nodal scheme is used for the Poisson stream function equation to properly account for the exponentially varying vorticity source. Rigorous expressions for the velocity components and the no-slip vorticity boundary condition are derived from the stream function formulation. The method is validated with several benchmark problems. An idealized purely convective flow of a scalar step function indicates that the nodal approximation errors are primarily dispersive, not dissipative, in nature. Results for idealized and actual recirculating driven-cavity flows reveal a significant reduction in false diffusion compared with conventional finite difference techniques.

OSTI ID:
6521038
Journal Information:
Nuclear Science and Engineering; (United States), Vol. 114:1; ISSN 0029-5639
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English