Time-dependent solutions of the viscous incompressible flow past a circular cylinder by the method of series truncation

Semi-analytic solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are calculated for two-dimensional, symmetrical, viscous incompressible flow past a circular cylinder. The stream and vorticity functions are expanded in the finite Fourier series and then substituted in the Navier-Stokes equations. This led to a system of coupled parabolic partial differential equations which are solved numerically. More terms of the series are required as Reynolds number increases and the present calculations were terminated at Reynolds number 600 with 60 terms of Fourier series. The results are compared with similar calculations and experimental data for Reynolds numbers 60, 100, 200, 500, 550 and 600. At the termination of the calculations for Reynolds numbers 60 and 100, the separation angle, the wake length, the drag coefficient, and the vorticity distributions around the surface were very close to their steady-state values. A secondary vortex appeared on the surface of the cylinder in the case of Reynolds numbers 500, 550 and 600. The wake length, the drag coefficient and the separation angle differ slightly at a given instant in the case of Reynolds numbers 500, 550 and 600.     

Simulation of a viscous compressible flow past a circular cylinder with high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods

This paper is devoted to the simulation of viscous compressible flows with high-order accurate discontinuous Galerkin methods on bidimensional unstructured meshes. The formulation for the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations is due to Oden et al. [An hp-adaptive discontinuous finite element method for computational fluid dynamics. PhD thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 1997; J Comput Phys 1998;146:491–519]. It involves a weak imposition of continuity conditions on the state variables and on fluxes across interelement boundaries. It does not make use of any auxiliary variables and then the cost for the implementation is reasonable. The method is coupled with a limiting procedure recently developed by the authors to suppress oscillations near large gradients. The limiter is totally free of problem dependence and maintains the convergence order for errors measured in the L¹-norm. This paper presents detailed numerical results of a viscous compressible flow past a circular cylinder at a Reynolds number of 100 for the cases of subsonic and supersonic regimes. The proposed simulations suggest that the method is very robust and is able to produce very accurate results on unstructured meshes.     

Spectral simulations of an unsteady compressible flow past a circular cylinder

An unsteady compressible viscous wake flow past a circular cylinder has been successfully simulated using spectral methods. A new approach in using the Chebyshev collocation method for a periodic problem is introduced. We have further proved that the eigenvalues associated with the differentiation matrix are purely imaginary, reflecting the periodicity of the problem. It has been shown that the solution of a model problem has exponential growth in time if an ‘improper’ boundary conditions procedure is used. A characteristic boundary conditions, which is based on the characteristics of the Euler equations of gas dynamics, has been derived for the spectral code. The primary vortex shedding frequency computed agrees well with the results in the literature for Mach = 0.4, Re = 80. No secondary frequency is observed in the power spectrum analysis of the pressure data.     

Calculating viscous incompressible flow past an elliptical cylinder on a parallel computer

An algorithm developed for a parallel computer is described. The algorithm has been simulated on an ES-1060 machine, and the results are compared with those obtained on BÉSM-6 computer.Translated from Kibernetika, No. 1, pp. 64–68, January–February, 1990.     

On the velocity-vorticity approach to viscous incompressible flow

Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering - This work present a selection of recent analytical and numerical results on the equations describing 2D and 3D laminar flows of a newtonian...     

Parallel computation of unsteady three-dimensional incompressible viscous flow using an unstructured multigrid method

The development and validation of a parallel unstructured tetrahedral non-nested multigrid (MG) method for simulation of unsteady 3D incompressible viscous flow is presented. The Navier-Stokes solver is based on the artificial compressibility method (ACM) and a higher-order characteristics-based finite-volume scheme on unstructured MG. Unsteady flow is calculated with an implicit dual time stepping scheme. The parallelization of the solver is achieved by a MG domain decomposition approach (MG-DD), using the Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) programming paradigm. The Message-Passing Interface (MPI) Library is used for communication of data and loop arrays are decomposed using the OpenMP standard. The parallel codes using single grid and MG are used to simulate steady and unsteady incompressible viscous flows for a 3D lid-driven cavity flow for validation and performance evaluation purposes. The speedups and efficiencies obtained by both the parallel single grid and MG solvers are reasonably good for all test cases, using up to 32 processors on the SGI Origin 3400. The parallel results obtained agree well with those of serial solvers and with numerical solutions obtained by other researchers, as well as experimental measurements.     

Steady and unsteady flow past a rotating circular cylinder at low Reynolds numbers

Results of calculations of the steady and unsteady flows past a circular cylinder which is rotating with constant angular velocity and translating with constant linear velocity are presented. The motion is assumed to be two-dimensional and to be governed by the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible fluids. For the unsteady flow, the cylinder is started impulsively from rest and it is found that for low Reynolds numbers the flow approaches a steady state after a large enough time. Detailed results are given for the development of the flow with time for Reynolds numbers 5 and 20 based on the diameter of the cylinder. For comparison purposes the corresponding steady flow problem has been solved. The calculated values of the steady-state lift, drag and moment coefficients from the two methods are found to be in good agreement. Notable, however, are the discrepancies between these results and other recent numerical solutions to the steady-state Navier-Stokes equations. Some unsteady results are also given for the higher Reynolds numbers of 60, 100 and 200. In these cases the flow does not tend to be a steady state but develops a periodic pattern of vortex shedding.     

Manifold method coupled velocity and pressure for Navier-Stokes equations and direct numerical solution of unsteady incompressible viscous flow

Numerical manifold method (NMM) application to direct numerical solution for unsteady incompressible viscous flow Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations was discussed in this paper, and numerical manifold schemes for N-S equations were derived based on Galerkin weighted residuals method as well. Mixed covers with linear polynomial function for velocity and constant function for pressure was employed in finite element cover system. The patch test demonstrated that mixed covers manifold elements meet the stability conditions and can be applied to solve N-S equations coupled velocity and pressure variables directly. The numerical schemes with mixed covers have also been proved to be unconditionally stable. As applications, mixed cover 4-node rectangular manifold element has been used to simulate the unsteady incompressible viscous flow in typical driven cavity and flow around a square cylinder in a horizontal channel. High accurate results obtained from much less calculational variables and very large time steps are in very good agreement with the compact finite difference solutions from very fine element meshes and very less time steps in references. Numerical tests illustrate that NMM is an effective and high order accurate numerical method for unsteady incompressible viscous flow N-S equations.     

A Legendre spectral element method for simulation of unsteady incompressible viscous free-surface flows

A new Legendre spectral element method is presented for the solution of viscous incompressible free-surface flows. It is based on the following extensions of the fixed-domain spectral element method: use of the full viscous stress tensor for natural imposition of traction (surface tension) boundary conditions; use of arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian methods for accurate representation of moving boundaries; and use of semi-implicit time-stepping procedures to partially decouple the free-surface evolution and interior Navier-Stokes equations. For purposes of analysis and clarity of presentation, attention is focused on the stability of falling films. Analysis of the spectrum of the linear stability problem (Orr-Sommerfeld equation) associated with film flow reveals physical effects that limit the stability of semi-implicit schemes and suggests optimal formulas for temporal discretization of the spectral element equations. Detailed results are presented for the spectral element simulation of the film flow problem.     

Theory and implementation of a semi-implicit finite element method for viscous incompressible flow

A numerical procedure for solving the time-dependent, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is derived based on the operator-splitting technique. This operator split allows separate operations on each of the variable fields to enable pressure-velocity coupling. Discretizations of the equations are formed on a nonstaggered finite element mesh and the solutions are obtained in a time-marching fashion. Several benchmark problems, including a standing vortex problem, a lid-driven cavity and a flow around a rectangular cylinder, are studied to demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the present algorithm.     

Assessment of grid interface treatments for multi-block incompressible viscous flow computation

In the multi-block computation of the Navier-Stokes equations, the interface treatment is a key issue. In the present work, we investigate this issue in the context of a pressure-based method using a non-orthogonal grid. For the momentum equations, a straightforward bilinear interpolation seems satisfactory as the interface treatment; on the other hand, because the pressure field depends on the satisfaction of the mass continuity equation, a conservative interface treatment has been found necessary for the pressure-correction equation. Two alternative interface treatments for the pressure-correction equation, one employing the Neumann boundary condition in both grid blocks, based on explicit local, cell-by-cell mass flux conservation, and the other utilizing Neumann-Dirichlet boundary conditions, allowing the interface condition in one block to be derived by interpolating the pressure field from the adjacent block, are assessed in the present work. To evaluate these interface schemes, the laminar flow inside a lid-driven cavity flow, and the turbulent flow around cascades of multiple airfoils have been investigated. For the case tested, both interface treatments give comparable accuracy. The finding that more than one type of interface treatment can work well allows one to devise a flexible multi-block strategy for complex flow computations.     

Parallel-multigrid computation of unsteady incompressible viscous flows using a matrix-free implicit method and high-resolution characteristics-based scheme

A three-dimensional parallel unstructured non-nested multigrid solver for solutions of unsteady incompressible viscous flow is developed and validated. The finite-volume Navier–Stokes solver is based on the artificial compressibility approach with a high-resolution method of characteristics-based scheme for handling convection terms. The unsteady flow is calculated with a matrix-free implicit dual time stepping scheme. The parallelization of the multigrid solver is achieved by multigrid domain decomposition approach (MG-DD), using single program multiple data (SPMD) and multiple instruction multiple data (MIMD) programming paradigm. There are two parallelization strategies proposed in this work, first strategy is a one-level parallelization strategy using geometric domain decomposition technique alone, second strategy is a two-level parallelization strategy that consists of a hybrid of both geometric domain decomposition and data decomposition techniques. Message-passing interface (MPI) and OpenMP standard are used to communicate data between processors and decompose loop iterations arrays, respectively. The parallel-multigrid code is used to simulate both steady and unsteady incompressible viscous flows over a circular cylinder and a lid-driven cavity flow. A maximum speedup of 22.5 could be achieved on 32 processors, for instance, the lid-driven cavity flow of Re = 1000. The results obtained agree well with numerical solutions obtained by other researchers as well as experimental measurements. A detailed study of the time step size and number of pseudo-sub-iterations per time step required for simulating unsteady flow are presented in this paper.     

Vortex methods for incompressible flow simulations on the GPU

We present a remeshed vortex particle method for incompressible flow simulations on GPUs. The particles are convected in a Lagrangian frame and are periodically reinitialized on a regular grid. The grid is used in addition to solve for the velocity–vorticity Poisson equation and for the computation of the diffusion operators. In the present GPU implementation of particle methods, the remeshing and the solution of the Poisson equation rely on fast and efficient mesh-particle interpolations. We demonstrate that particle remeshing introduces minimal artificial dissipation, enables a faster computation of differential operators on particles over grid-free techniques and can be efficiently implemented on GPUs. The results demonstrate that, contrary to common practice in particle simulations, it is necessary to remesh the (vortex) particle locations in order to solve accurately the equations they discretize, without compromising the speed of the method. The present method leads to simulations of incompressible vortical flows on GPUs with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency.     

Solvability of the problem of the self-propelled motion of several rigid bodies in a viscous incompressible fluid

In this paper, we investigate the problem of the motion of self-propelled rigid bodies in a viscous incompressible fluid filling a bounded container. The motion of the fluid is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations. The bodies move due both to the flow of the ambient fluid and to the engines which are modelled by fluxes of the fluid through the boundaries of the bodies. It is proved that the problem has at least one weak solution on an arbitrary time interval which does not include instants of collisions of the bodies.     

MHD flow past a circular cylinder using the immersed boundary method

The immersed boundary method (IB hereafter) is an efficient numerical methodology for treating purely hydrodynamic flows in geometrically complicated flow-domains. Recently Grigoriadis et als. [1] proposed an extension of the IB method that accounts for electromagnetic effects near non-conducting boundaries in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows. The proposed extension (hereafter called MIB method) integrates naturally within the original IB concept and is suitable for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of liquid metal flows. It is based on the proper definition of an externally applied current density field in order to satisfy the Maxwell equations in the presence of arbitrarily-shaped, non-conducting immersed boundaries. The efficiency of the proposed method is achieved by fast direct solutions of the two poisson equations for the hydrodynamic pressure and the electrostatic potential.The purpose of the present study is to establish the performance of the new MIB method in challenging configurations for which sufficient details are available in the literature. For this purpose, we have considered the classical MHD problem of a conducting fluid that is exposed to an external magnetic field while flowing across a circular cylinder with electrically insulated boundaries. Two- and three-dimensional, steady and unsteady, flow regimes were examined for Reynolds numbers Re_d ranging up to 200 based on the cylinder’s diameter. The intensity of the external magnetic field, as characterized by the magnetic interaction parameter N, varied from N=0 for the purely hydrodynamic cases up to N=5 for the MHD cases. For each simulation, a sufficiently fine Cartesian computational mesh was selected to ensure adequate resolution of the thin boundary layers developing due to the magnetic field, the so called Hartmann and sidewall layers. Results for a wide range of flow and magnetic field strength parameters show that the MIB method is capable of accurately reproducing integral parameters, such as the lift and drag coefficients, as well as the geometrical details of the recirculation zones. The results of the present study suggest that the proposed MIB methodology provides a powerful numerical tool for accurate MHD simulations, and that it can extend the applicability of existing Cartesian flow solvers as well as the range of computable MHD flows. Moreover, the new MIB method has been used to carrry out a series of accurate simulations allowing the determination of asymptotic laws for the lift and drag coefficients and the extent of the recirculation length as a function of the amplitude of the magnetic field. These results are reported herein.     

Control of flow using genetic algorithm for a circular cylinder executing rotary oscillation

We propose here a new approach to optimally control incompressible viscous flow past a circular cylinder for drag minimization by rotary oscillation. The flow at Re = 15000 is simulated by solving 2D Navier-Stokes equations in stream function-vorticity formulation. High accuracy compact scheme for space discretization and four stage Runge-Kutta scheme for time integration makes such simulation possible. While numerical solution for this flow field has been reported using a fast viscous-vortex method, to our knowledge, this has not been done at such a high Reynolds number by computing the Navier-Stokes equation before. The importance of scale resolution, aliasing problem and preservation of physical dispersion relation for such vortical flows of the used high accuracy schemes [Sengupta TK. Fundamentals of computational fluid dynamics. Hyderabad, India: University Press; 2004] is highlighted.For the dynamic problem, a novel genetic algorithm (GA) based optimization technique has been adopted, where solutions of Navier-Stokes equations are obtained using small time-horizons at every step of the optimization process, called a GA generation. Then the objective functions is evaluated that is followed by GA determined improvement of the decision variables. This procedure of time advancement can also be adopted to control such flows experimentally, as one obtains time-accurate solution of the Navier-Stokes equation subject to discrete changes of decision variables. The objective function - the time-averaged drag - is optimized using a real-coded genetic algorithm [Deb K. Multi-objective optimization using evolutionary algorithms. Chichester, UK: Wiley; 2001] for the two decision variables, the maximum rotation rate and the forcing frequency of the rotary oscillation. Various approaches to optimal decision variables have been explored for the purpose of drag reduction and the collection of results are self-consistent and furthermore match well with the experimental values reported in [Tokumaru PT, Dimotakis PE. Rotary oscillation control of a cylinder wake. J Fluid Mech 1991;224:77].     

Some exact solutions for the helical flow of a generalized Oldroyd-B fluid in a circular cylinder

The helical flow of an Oldroyd-B fluid with fractional derivatives, also named generalized Oldroyd-B fluid, in an infinite circular cylinder is studied using Hankel and Laplace transforms. The motion is due to the cylinder that, at time t=0⁺ begins to rotate around its axis with an angular velocity Ωt, and to slide along the same axis with linear velocity Vt. The components of the velocity field and the resulting shear stresses are presented under integral and series form in terms of the generalized G and R functions. The solutions that have been obtained satisfy all imposed initial and boundary conditions, and are presented as sums of two terms, one of them being a similar solution for a Newtonian fluid. Similar solutions for generalized Maxwell fluids, as well as those for ordinary Oldroyd-B and Maxwell fluids are obtained as limiting cases of our general solutions. Furthermore, the solutions for Newtonian fluids performing the same motion, are also obtained as special cases of our solutions for α=β=1 and λ_r→λ.     

Numerical studies of the flow around a circular cylinder by a finite element method

Numerical solutions of the steady, incompressible, viscous flow past a circular cylinder are presented for Reynolds numbers R ranging from 1 to 100. The governing Navier-Stokes equations in the form of a single, fourth order differential equation for stream function and the boundary conditions are replaced by an equivalent variational principle. The numerical method is based on a finite element approximation of this principle. The resulting non-linear system is solved by the Newton-Raphson process. The pressure field is obtained from a finite element solution of the Poisson equation once the stream function is known. The results are compared with those determined by other numerical techniques and experiments. In particular, the discussion is concerned with the development of the closed wake with Reynolds number, and the tendency of R ≥ 40 flow toward instability.     

Error control and mesh optimization for high-order finite element approximation of incompressible viscous flow

We discuss the use of a posteriori error estimates for high-order finite element methods during simulation of the flow of incompressible viscous fluids. The correlation between the error estimator and actual error is used as a criterion for the error analysis efficiency. We show how to use the error estimator for mesh optimization which improves computational efficiency for both steady-state and unsteady flows. The method is applied to two-dimensional problems with known analytical solutions (Jeffrey-Hamel flow) and more complex flows around a body, both in a channel and in an open domain.     

Computer analysis of the aerodynamics and heat exchange of a cylinder in a viscous oscillating flow

The paper considers the results of analyzing the aerodynamics and heat exchange of a fixed cylinder under nonstationary airflow with average-velocity alternating pulsations numerically. It is shown that the pulsations significantly affect the vortex separation frequency, the Karman vortex street behind the cylinder, the pulsation frequency of the aerodynamic and heat exchange coefficients, and their average and amplitude values. The authors determined the engineering applications.