Implicit methods for fluid dynamics

This paper represents the contributions to the development of implicit procedures for solving the equations of fluid dynamics made by Briley and McDonald (1975)[1], Beam and Warming (1976, 1978) [2] and [3] and Lombard et al. (1983) [4]. The contributions of Briley and McDonald and Beam and Warming are well known, but Lombard has not been fully recognized for his innovative contributions to flux vector splitting and use of the DDADI (Diagonally Dominate Alternating Direction Implicit) algorithm. Their contributions are presented herein.Fully implicit algorithms are applied to two complex flow problems of current interest, (1) hypersonic non-equilibrium flow about a blunt nosed body and (2) flow within an MFD (magneto-fluid dynamics) accelerator. These two applications would be exceeding costly without the use of fully implicit methods.