A simple implementation of the immersed interface methods for Stokes flows with singular forces

In this paper, we introduce a simple version of the immersed interface method (IIM) for Stokes flows with singular forces along an interface. The numerical method is based on applying the Taylor’s expansions along the normal direction and incorporating the solution and its normal derivative jumps into the finite difference approximations. The fluid variables are solved in a staggered grid, and a new accurate interpolating scheme for the non-smooth velocity has been developed. The numerical results show that the scheme is second-order accurate.     

Viscous flow in domains with corners: Numerical artifacts,their origin and removal

Viscous flows in domains with boundaries forming two-dimensional corners are considered. We examine the case where on each side of the corner the boundary condition for the tangential velocity is formulated in terms of stress. It is shown that computing such flows numerically by straightforwardly applying well-tested algorithms (and numerical codes based on their use, such as COMSOL Multiphysics) can lead to spurious multivaluedness and mesh-dependence in the distribution of the fluid’s pressure. The origin of this difficulty is that, near a corner formed by smooth parts of the boundary, in addition to the solution of the formulated inhomogeneous problem, there also exists an eigensolution. For obtuse corner angles this eigensolution (a) becomes dominant and (b) has a singular radial derivative of velocity at the corner. Despite the bulk pressure in the eigensolution being constant, when the derivatives of the velocity are singular, numerical errors in the velocities calculation near the corner give rise to pressure spikes, whose magnitude increases as the mesh is refined. A method is developed that uses the knowledge about the eigensolution to remove the artifacts in the pressure distribution. The method is first explained in the simple case of a Stokes flow in a corner region and then generalized for the Navier–Stokes equations applied to describe steady and unsteady free-surface flows encountered in problems of dynamic wetting.     

On a collocation B-spline method for the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations

A novel B-spline collocation method for the solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations is presented. The discretization employs B-splines of maximum continuity, yielding schemes with high-resolution power. The Navier–Stokes equations are solved by using a fractional step method, where the projection step is considered as a Div–Grad problem, so that no pressure boundary conditions need to be prescribed. Pressure oscillations are prevented by introducing compatible B-spline bases for the velocity and pressure, yielding efficient schemes of arbitrary order of accuracy. The method is applied to two-dimensional benchmark flows, and mass lumping techniques for cost-effective computation of unsteady problems are discussed.     

An implicit high-order discontinuous Galerkin method for steady and unsteady incompressible flows

This paper presents the latest developments of a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for incompressible flows introduced in [Bassi F, Crivellini A, Di Pietro DA, Rebay S. An artificial compressibility flux for the discontinuous Galerkin solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. J Comput Phys 2006;218(2):794–815] for the steady Navier–Stokes equations and extended in [Bassi F, Crivellini A. A high-order discontinuous Galerkin method for natural convection problems. In: Wesseling P, Oñate E, Periaux J, editors. Electronic proceedings of the ECCOMAS CFD 2006 conference, Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, September 5–8; 2006. TU Delft] to the coupled Navier–Stokes and energy equations governing natural convection flows.

The method is fully implicit and applies to the governing equations in primitive variable form. Its distinguishing feature is the formulation of the inviscid interface flux, which is based on the solution of local Riemann problems associated with the artificial compressibility perturbation of the Euler equations. The tight coupling between pressure and velocity so introduced stabilizes the method and allows using equal-order approximation spaces for both pressure and velocity. Since, independently of the amount of artificial compressibility added, the interface flux reduces to the physical one for vanishing interface jumps, the resulting method is strongly consistent.

In this paper, we present a review of the method together with two recently developed issues: (i) the high-order DG discretization of the incompressible Euler equations; (ii) the high-order implicit time integration of unsteady flows. The accuracy and versatility of the method are demonstrated by a suite of computations of steady and unsteady, inviscid and viscous incompressible flows.     

On optimal node spacing for immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method in 2D and 3D

A computational study on optimal spacing of Lagrangian nodes discretizing a rigid and immobile immersed body boundary in 2D and 3D is presented in order to show how the density of the Lagrangian points affects the numerical results of the Immersed Boundary–Lattice Boltzmann Method (IB–LBM). The study is based on the implicit velocity correction-based IB–LBM proposed by Wu and Shu (2009, 2010) that allows computing the fluid–body interaction force. However, the (original) method fails for densely spaced Lagrangian points due to ill-conditioned or even singular linear systems that arise from the derivation of the method. We propose a modification that improves the solvability of the linear systems and compare the performance of both methods using several benchmark problems. The results show how the spacing of the Lagrangian points affects the numerical results, mainly the permeability of the discretized body boundary in applications to fluid flows over rigid obstacles and blood flows in arteries in 2D and 3D.     

Topology optimization of steady and unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes flows driven by body forces

This paper presents the topology optimization method for the steady and unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes flows driven by body forces, which typically include the constant force (e.g. the gravity) and the centrifugal and Coriolis forces. In the topology optimization problem, the artificial friction force with design variable interpolated porosity is added into the Navier–Stokes equations as the conventional method, and the physical body forces in the Navier–Stokes equations are penalized using the power-law approach. The topology optimization problem is analyzed by the continuous adjoint method, and solved by the finite element method in conjunction with the gradient based approach. In the numerical examples, the topology optimization of the fluidic channel, mass distribution of the flow and local velocity control are presented for the flows driven by body forces. The numerical results demonstrate that the presented method achieves the topology optimization of the flows driven by body forces robustly.     

An augmented approach for Stokes equations with a discontinuous viscosity and singular forces

For Stokes equations with a discontinuous viscosity across an arbitrary interface or/and singular forces along the interface, it is known that the pressure is discontinuous and the velocity is non-smooth. It has been shown that these discontinuities are coupled together, which makes it difficult to obtain accurate numerical solutions. In this paper, a new numerical method that decouples the jump conditions of the fluid variables through two augmented variables has been developed. The GMRES iterative method is used to solve the Schur complement system for the augmented variables that are only defined on the interface. The augmented approach also rescales the Stokes equations in such a way that a fast Poisson solver can be used in each iteration. Numerical tests using examples that have analytic solutions show that the new method has average second order accuracy for the velocity in the infinity norm. An example of a moving interface problem is also presented.     

Radial basis function meshless method for the steady incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

A meshless collocation method based on radial basis functions is proposed for solving the steady incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. This method has the capability of solving the governing equations using scattered nodes in the domain. We use the streamfunction formulation, and a trust-region method for solving the nonlinear problem. The no-slip boundary conditions are satisfied using a ghost node strategy. The efficiency of this method is demonstrated by solving three model problems: the driven cavity flows in square and rectangular domains and flow over a backward-facing step. The results obtained are in good agreement with benchmark solutions.     

An immersed boundary technique for simulating complex flows with rigid boundary

A new immersed boundary (IB) technique for the simulation of flow interacting with solid boundary is presented. The present formulation employs a mixture of Eulerian and Lagrangian variables, where the solid boundary is represented by discrete Lagrangian markers embedding in and exerting forces to the Eulerian fluid domain. The interactions between the Lagrangian markers and the fluid variables are linked by a simple discretized delta function. The numerical integration is based on a second-order fractional step method under the staggered grid spatial framework. Based on the direct momentum forcing on the Eulerian grids, a new force formulation on the Lagrangian marker is proposed, which ensures the satisfaction of the no-slip boundary condition on the immersed boundary in the intermediate time step. This forcing procedure involves solving a banded linear system of equations whose unknowns consist of the boundary forces on the Lagrangian markers; thus, the order of the unknowns is one-dimensional lower than the fluid variables. Numerical experiments show that the stability limit is not altered by the proposed force formulation, though the second-order accuracy of the adopted numerical scheme is degraded to 1.5 order. Four different test problems are simulated using the present technique (rotating ring flow, lid-driven cavity and flows over a stationary cylinder and an in-line oscillating cylinder), and the results are compared with previous experimental and numerical results. The numerical evidences show the accuracy and the capability of the proposed method for solving complex geometry flow problems both with stationary and moving boundaries.     

Using integral equations and the immersed interface method to solve immersed boundary problems with stiff forces

We propose a fast, explicit numerical method for computing approximations for the immersed boundary problem in which the boundaries that separate the fluid into two regions are stiff. In the numerical computations of such problems, one frequently has to contend with numerical instability, as the stiff immersed boundaries exert large forces on the local fluid. When the boundary forces are treated explicitly, prohibitively small time-steps may be required to maintain numerical stability. On the other hand, when the boundary forces are treated implicitly, the restriction on the time-step size is reduced, but the solution of a large system of coupled non-linear equations may be required. In this work, we develop an efficient method that combines an integral equation approach with the immersed interface method. The present method treats the boundary forces explicitly. To reduce computational costs, the method uses an operator-splitting approach: large time-steps are used to update the non-stiff advection terms, and smaller substeps are used to advance the stiff boundary. At each substep, an integral equation is computed to yield fluid velocity local to the boundary; those velocity values are then used to update the boundary configuration. Fluid variables are computed over the entire domain, using the immersed interface method, only at the end of the large advection time-steps. Numerical results suggest that the present method compares favorably with an implementation of the immersed interface method that employs an explicit time-stepping and no fractional stepping.     

A Mass Conservative Scheme for Fluid–Structure Interaction Problems by the Staggered Discontinuous Galerkin Method

In this paper, we develop a new mass conservative numerical scheme for the simulations of a class of fluid–structure interaction problems. We will use the immersed boundary method to model the fluid–structure interaction, while the fluid flow is governed by the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. The immersed boundary method is proven to be a successful scheme to model fluid–structure interactions. To ensure mass conservation, we will use the staggered discontinuous Galerkin method to discretize the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. The staggered discontinuous Galerkin method is able to preserve the skew-symmetry of the convection term. In addition, by using a local postprocessing technique, the weakly divergence free velocity can be used to compute a new postprocessed velocity, which is exactly divergence free and has a superconvergence property. This strongly divergence free velocity field is the key to the mass conservation. Furthermore, energy stability is improved by the skew-symmetric discretization of the convection term. We will present several numerical results to show the performance of the method.     

A Parallel Domain Decomposition Method for 3D Unsteady Incompressible Flows at High Reynolds Number

Numerical simulation of three-dimensional incompressible flows at high Reynolds number using the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations is challenging. In order to obtain accurate simulations, very fine meshes are necessary, and such simulations are increasingly important for modern engineering practices, such as understanding the flow behavior around high speed trains, which is the target application of this research. To avoid the time step size constraint imposed by the CFL number and the fine spacial mesh size, we investigate some fully implicit methods, and focus on how to solve the large nonlinear system of equations at each time step on large scale parallel computers. In most of the existing implicit Navier–Stokes solvers, segregated velocity and pressure treatment is employed. In this paper, we focus on the Newton–Krylov–Schwarz method for solving the monolithic nonlinear system arising from the fully coupled finite element discretization of the Navier–Stokes equations on unstructured meshes. In the subdomain, LU or point-block ILU is used as the local solver. We test the algorithm for some three-dimensional complex unsteady flows, including flows passing a high speed train, on a supercomputer with thousands of processors. Numerical experiments show that the algorithm has superlinear scalability with over three thousand processors for problems with tens of millions of unknowns.     

An immersed boundary method on Cartesian adaptive grids for the simulation of compressible flows around arbitrary geometries

In this article, we present an immersed boundary method for the simulation of compressible flows of complex geometries encountered in aerodynamics. The immersed boundary methods allow the mesh not to conform to obstacles, whose influence is taken into account by modifying the governing equations locally (either by a source term within the equation or by imposing the flow variables or fluxes locally, similarly to a boundary condition). A main feature of the approach which we propose is that it relies on structured Cartesian grids in combination with a dedicated HPC Cartesian solver, taking advantage of their low memory and CPU time requirements but also the automation of the mesh generation and adaptation. Turbulent flow simulations are performed by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations or by a Large-Eddy simulation approach, in combination with a wall function at high Reynolds number, to mitigate the cell count resulting from the isotropic nature of Cartesian cells. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that this automatic workflow is fast and robust and enables to get quantitative aerodynamics results on geometrically complex configurations. Results obtained are in good agreement with classical body-fitted approaches but with a significant reduction of the time of the whole process, that is a day for RANS simulations, including the mesh generation.

     

Development of a meshless Galerkin boundary node method for viscous fluid flows

In this paper, a meshless Galerkin boundary node method is developed for boundary-only analysis of the interior and exterior incompressible viscous fluid flows, governed by the Stokes equations, in biharmonic stream function formulation. This method combines scattered points and boundary integral equations. Some of the novel features of this meshless scheme are boundary conditions can be enforced directly and easily despite the meshless shape functions lack the delta function property, and system matrices are symmetric and positive definite. The error analysis and convergence study of both velocity and pressure are presented in Sobolev spaces. The performance of this approach is illustrated and assessed through some numerical examples.     

A finite volume method to solve the 3D Navier–Stokes equations on unstructured collocated meshes

A new method to solve the Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible viscous flows and the transport of a scalar quantity is proposed. This method is based upon a fractional time step scheme and the finite volume method on unstructured meshes. The governing equations are discretized using a collocated, cell-centered arrangement of velocity and pressure. The solution variables are stored at the cell-circumcenters. Theoretical results and numerical properties of the scheme are provided. Predictions of lid-driven cavity flow, flows past a cylinder and heat transport in a cylinder are performed to validate the method.     

An immersed boundary method based on the lattice Boltzmann approach in three dimensions,with application

The immersed boundary (IB) method originated by Peskin has been popular in modeling and simulating problems involving the interaction of a flexible structure and a viscous incompressible fluid. The Navier–Stokes (N–S) equations in the IB method are usually solved using numerical methods such as FFT and projection methods. Here in our work, the N–S equations are solved by an alternative approach, the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Compared to many conventional N–S solvers, the LBM can be easier to implement and more convenient for modeling additional physics in a problem. This alternative approach adds extra versatility to the immersed boundary method. In this paper we discuss the use of a 3D lattice Boltzmann model (D3Q19) within the IB method. We use this hybrid approach to simulate a viscous flow past a flexible sheet tethered at its middle line in a 3D channel and determine a drag scaling law for the sheet. Our main conclusions are: (1) the hybrid method is convergent with first-order accuracy which is consistent with the immersed boundary method in general; (2) the drag of the flexible sheet appears to scale with the inflow speed which is in sharp contrast with the square law for a rigid body in a viscous flow.     

Numerical simulation of 3D fluid–structure interaction flow using an immersed object method with overlapping grids

The newly developed immersed object method (IOM) [Tai CH, Zhao Y, Liew KM. Parallel computation of unsteady incompressible viscous flows around moving rigid bodies using an immersed object method with overlapping grids. J Comput Phys 2005; 207(1): 151–72] is extended for 3D unsteady flow simulation with fluid–structure interaction (FSI), which is made possible by combining it with a parallel unstructured multigrid Navier–Stokes solver using a matrix-free implicit dual time stepping and finite volume method [Tai CH, Zhao Y, Liew KM. Parallel computation of unsteady three-dimensional incompressible viscous flow using an unstructured multigrid method. In: The second M.I.T. conference on computational fluid and solid mechanics, June 17–20, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA, 2003; Tai CH, Zhao Y, Liew KM. Parallel computation of unsteady three-dimensional incompressible viscous flow using an unstructured multigrid method, Special issue on “Preconditioning methods: algorithms, applications and software environments. Comput Struct 2004; 82(28): 2425–36]. This uniquely combined method is then employed to perform detailed study of 3D unsteady flows with complex FSI. In the IOM, a body force term F is introduced into the momentum equations during the artificial compressibility (AC) sub-iterations so that a desired velocity distribution V₀ can be obtained on and within the object boundary, which needs not coincide with the grid, by adopting the direct forcing method. An object mesh is immersed into the flow domain to define the boundary of the object. The advantage of this is that bodies of almost arbitrary shapes can be added without grid restructuring, a procedure which is often time-consuming and computationally expensive. It has enabled us to perform complex and detailed 3D unsteady blood flow and blood–leaflets interaction in a mechanical heart valve (MHV) under physiological conditions.     

Variable grid scheme for discontinuous grid spacing and derivatives

A Crank-Nicolson type finite-difference scheme is developed for solving boundary layer flows on arbitrary grids and with jumps in viscosity and density. The method is applied to the similar equations and two approaches are obtained depending upon the linearization of terms. One of these approaches can be developed from the box scheme formulation. In some cases, difference relations for derivatives are those obtained in the variable grid scheme developed previously. Numerical solution verify that the difference techniques have second-order behavior as the grid system is refined. A wall velocity gradient relation is determined which gives second-order accuracy for all grids considered.     

Euler–Lagrange coupling with damping effects: Application to slamming problems

During a high velocity impact of a structure on a nearly incompressible fluid, impulse loads with high-pressure peaks occur. This physical phenomenon called ‘slamming’ is a concern in shipbuilding industry because of the possibility of hull damage. Shipbuilding companies have carried out several studies on slamming modeling using FEM software with added mass techniques to represent fluid effects. In the added mass method inertia effects of the fluid are not taken into account and are only valid when the deadrise angle is small. This paper presents the prediction of the local high pressure load on a rigid wedge impacting a free surface, where the fluid is represented by solving Navier–Stokes equations with an Eulerian or ALE formulation. The fluid–structure interaction is simulated using a coupling algorithm; the fluid is treated on a fixed or moving mesh using an ALE formulation and the structure on a deformable mesh using a Lagrangian formulation.A new coupling algorithm is developed in the paper. The coupling algorithm computes the coupling forces at the fluid–structure interface. These forces are added to the fluid and structure nodal forces, where fluid and structure are solved using an explicit finite element formulation. Predicting the local pressure peak on the structure requires an accurate fluid–structure interaction algorithm. The Euler–Lagrange coupling algorithm presented in this paper uses a penalty based formulation similar to penalty contact in Lagrangian analyses. Both penalty coupling and penalty contact can generate high frequency oscillations due to the nearly incompressible nature of the fluid. In this paper, a damping force based on the relative velocity of the fluid and the structure is introduced to smooth out non-physical high frequency oscillations induced by the penalty springs in the coupling algorithm.     

Finite volume flow simulations on arbitrary domains

We present a novel method for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations that more accurately handles arbitrary boundary conditions and sharp geometric features in the fluid domain. It uses a space filling tetrahedral mesh, which can be created using many well-known methods, to represent the fluid domain. Examples of the method’s strengths are illustrated by free surface fluid simulations and smoke simulations of flows around objects with complex geometry.