A staggered grid arrangement for solving incompressible flows with hybrid unstructured meshes

This work presents an alternative to the discretization of the Navier–Stokes equations using a finite volume method for hybrid unstructured grids with a staggered grid arrangement of variables. It has developed a numerical scheme, analogous to the element-based finite volume method, for the solution of 2-D incompressible fluid flow problems using several coupling strategies. All velocity components are stored at each face of the elements (pressure control volumes), following the usual procedure of staggering velocity and pressure. With this staggered arrangement, the balance of mass and momentum is satisfied, simultaneously, for the same set of variables, rendering numerical stability when compared to the nonstaggered arrangement.