Macroscale “continuum” level predictions are made by a new way to construct computationally efficient “wrappers” around fine-scale, microscopic, detailed descriptions of dynamical systems, such as molecular dynamics. It is often significantly easier to code a microscale simulator with periodicity: so the challenge addressed here is to develop a scheme that uses only a given periodic microscale simulator; specifically, one for atomistic dynamics. Numerical simulations show that applying a suitable proportional controller within “action regions” of a patch of atomistic simulation effectively predicts the macroscale transport of heat. Theoretical analysis establishes that such an approach will generally be effective and efficient, and also determines good values for the strength of the proportional controller. This work has the potential to empower systematic analysis and understanding at a macroscopic system level when only a given microscale simulator is available.

Simplified models like the shallow water equations (SWE) are commonly adopted for describing a wide range of free surface flow problems, like flows in rivers, lakes, estuaries, or coastal areas. In the literature, numerical methods for the SWE are mostly mesh-based. However, this macroscopic approach is unable to accurately represent the complexity of flows near coastlines, where waves nearly break. This fact prompted the idea of coupling the mesh-based SWE model with a meshless particle method for solving the Euler equations. In a previous paper, a method to couple the staggered scheme SWE and the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) Euler equations was developed and discussed. In this article, this coupled model is used for simulating solitary wave run-up on a sloping beach. The results show strong agreement with the experimental data of Synolakis. Simulations of wave overtopping over a seawall were also performed.

A two-layer non-hydrostatic numerical model is proposed to simulate the formation of undular bores by tsunami wave fission. These phenomena could not be produced by a hydrostatic model. Here, we derived a modified Shallow Water Equations with involving hydrodynamic pressure using two layer approach. Staggered finite volume method with predictor corrector step is applied to solve the equation numerically. Numerical dispersion relation is derived from our model to confirm the exact linear dispersion relation for dispersive waves. To illustrate the performance of our non-hydrostatic scheme in case of linear wave dispersion and non-linearity, four test cases of free surface flows are provided. The first test case is standing wave in a closed basin, which test the ability of the numerical scheme in simulating dispersive wave motion with the correct frequency. The second test case is the solitary wave propagation as the examination of owing balance between dispersion and nonlinearity. Regular wave propagation over a submerged bar test by Beji is simulated to show that our non-hydrostatic scheme described well the shoaling process as well as the linear dispersion compared with the experimental data. The last test case is the undular bore propagation.

This paper presents the simulation of complex separation flows over a modern fighter model at high angle of attack by using an unstructured/hybrid grid based Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) solver with an adaptive dissipation second-order hybrid scheme. Simulation results, including the complex vortex structures, as well as vortex breakdown phenomenon and the overall aerodynamic performance, are analyzed and compared with experimental data and unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) results, which indicates that with the DES solver, clearer vortical flow structures are captured and more accurate aerodynamic coefficients are obtained. The unsteady properties of DES flow field are investigated in detail by correlation coefficient analysis, power spectral density (PSD) analysis and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis, which indicates that the spiral motion of the primary vortex on the leeward side of the aircraft model is highly nonlinear and dominates the flow field. Through the comparisons of flow topology and pressure distributions with URANS results, the reason why higher and more accurate lift can be obtained by DES is discussed. Overall, these results show the potential capability of present DES solver in industrial applications.

For problems governed by a non-normal operator, the leading eigenvalue of the operator is of limited interest and a more relevant measure of the stability is obtained by considering the harmonic forcing causing the largest system response. Various methods for determining this so-called optimal forcing exist, but they all suffer from great computational expense and are hence not practical for large-scale problems. In the present paper a new method is presented, which is applicable to problems of arbitrary size. The method does not rely on timestepping, but on the solution of linear systems, in which the inverse Laplacian acts as a preconditioner. By formulating the search for the optimal forcing as an eigenvalue problem based on the resolvent operator, repeated system solves amount to power iterations, in which the dominant eigenvalue is seen to correspond to the energy amplification in a system for a given frequency, and the eigenfunction to the corresponding forcing function. Implementation of the method requires only minor modifications of an existing timestepping code, and is applicable to any partial differential equation containing the Laplacian, such as the Navier-Stokes equations. We discuss the method, first, in the context of the linear Ginzburg-Landau equation and then, the two-dimensional lid-driven cavity flow governed by the Navier-Stokes equations. Most importantly, we demonstrate that for the lid-driven cavity, the optimal forcing can be computed using a factor of up to 500 times fewer operator evaluations than the standard method based on exponential timestepping.

In this work, we introduce an IMEX discontinuous Galerkin solver for the weakly compressible isentropic Euler equations. The splitting needed for the IMEX temporal integration is based on the recently introduced reference solution splitting [32, 52], which makes use of the incompressible solution. We show that the overall method is asymptotic preserving. Numerical results show the performance of the algorithm which is stable under a convective CFL condition and does not show any order degradation.

A second order Ghost Fluid method is proposed for the treatment of interface problems of elliptic equations with discontinuous coefficients. By appropriate use of auxiliary virtual points, physical jump conditions are enforced at the interface. The signed distance function is used for the implicit description of irregular domain. With the additional unknowns, high order approximation considering the discontinuity can be built. To avoid the ill-conditioned matrix, the interpolation stencils are selected adaptively to balance the accuracy and the numerical stability. Additional equations containing the jump restrictions are assembled with the original discretized algebraic equations to form a new sparse linear system. Several Krylov iterative solvers are tested for the newly derived linear system. The results of a series of 1-D, 2-D tests show that the proposed method possesses second order accuracy in L∞ norm. Besides, the method can be extended to the 3-D problems straightforwardly. Numerical results reveal the present method is highly efficient and robust in dealing with the interface problems of elliptic equations.

The present paper follows our previous work [Yang et al., Phys. Rev. E, 90 (2014), 063011] in which the bending modes of a symmetric flexible fiber in viscous flows were studied by using a coupling approach of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and element bending group (EBG). It was shown that a symmetric flexible fiber can undergo four different bending modes including stable U-shape, slight swing, violent flapping and stable closure modes. For an asymmetric flexible fiber, the bending modes can be different. This paper numerically studies the fiber shape, flow field and fluid drag of an asymmetric flexible fiber immersed in a viscous fluid flow by using the SPH-EBG coupling method. An asymmetric number is defined to describe the asymmetry of a flexible fiber. The effects of the asymmetric number on the fiber shape, flow field and fluid drag are investigated.

This paper develops Runge-Kutta PK -based central discontinuous Galerkin (CDG) methods with WENO limiter for the one- and two-dimensional special relativistic hydrodynamical (RHD) equations, K = 1,2,3. Different from the non-central DG methods, the Runge-Kutta CDG methods have to find two approximate solutions defined on mutually dual meshes. For each mesh, the CDG approximate solutions on its dual mesh are used to calculate the flux values in the cell and on the cell boundary so that the approximate solutions on mutually dual meshes are coupled with each other, and the use of numerical flux will be avoided. The WENO limiter is adaptively implemented via two steps: the “troubled” cells are first identified by using a modified TVB minmod function, and then the WENO technique is used to locally reconstruct new polynomials of degree (2K+1) replacing the CDG solutions inside the “troubled” cells by the cell average values of the CDG solutions in the neighboring cells as well as the original cell averages of the “troubled” cells. Because the WENO limiter is only employed for finite “troubled” cells, the computational cost can be as little as possible. The accuracy of the CDG without the numerical dissipation is analyzed and calculation of the flux integrals over the cells is also addressed. Several test problems in one and two dimensions are solved by using our Runge-Kutta CDG methods with WENO limiter. The computations demonstrate that our methods are stable, accurate, and robust in solving complex RHD problems.

Almost all schemes existed in the literature to solve the Lattice Boltzmann Equation like stream & collide, finite difference, finite element, finite volume schemes are explicit. However, it is known fact that implicit methods utilizes better stability and faster convergence compared to the explicit methods. In this paper, a method named herein as Implicit Finite Volume Lattice Boltzmann Method (IFVLBM) for incompressible laminar and turbulent flows is proposed and it is applied to some 2D benchmark test cases given in the literature. Alternating Direction Implicit, an approximate factorization method is used to solve the obtained algebraic system. The proposed method presents a very good agreement for all the validation cases with the literature data. The proposed method shows good stability characteristics, the CFL number is eased. IFVLBM has about 2 times faster convergence rate compared with Implicit-Explicit Runge Kutta method even though it possesses a computational burden from the solution of algebraic systems of equations.

Vortex and vorticity are two correlated but fundamentally different concepts which have been the central issues in fluid mechanics research. Vorticity has rigorous mathematical definition (curl of velocity), but no clear physical meaning. Vortex has clear physical meaning (rotation) but no rigorous mathematical definition. For a long time, many people treat them as a same thing. However, based on our high-order direct numerical simulation (DNS), we found that first, “vortex” is not “vorticity tube” or “vortex tube” which is widely defined as a bundle of vorticity lines without any vorticity line leak. Actually, vortex is an open area for vorticity line penetration. Second, vortex is not necessarily congregation of vorticity lines, but dispersion in many 3-dimensional cases. Some textbooks say that vortex cannot end inside the flow field but must end on the solid wall (and/or boundaries). Our DNS observation and many other numerical results show almost all vortices are ended inside the flow field. Finally, a more theoretical study shows that neither vortex nor vorticity line can attach to the solid wall and they must be detached from the wall.

This article presents a novel monolithic numerical method for computing flow-induced stresses for problems involving arbitrarily-shaped stationary boundaries. A unified momentum equation for a continuum consisting of both fluids and solids is derived in terms of velocity by hybridizing the momentum equations of incompressible fluids and linear elastic solids. Discontinuities at the interface are smeared over a finite thickness around the interface using the signed distance function, and the resulting momentum equation implicitly takes care of the interfacial conditions without using a body-fitted grid. A finite volume approach is employed to discretize the obtained governing equations on a Cartesian grid. For validation purposes, this method has been applied to three examples, lid-driven cavity flow in a square cavity, lid-driven cavity flow in a circular cavity, and flow over a cylinder, where velocity and stress fields are simultaneously obtained for both fluids and structures. The simulation results agree well with the results found in the literature and the results obtained by COMSOL Multiphysics®.

The paper develops high order accurate Runge-Kutta discontinuous local evolution Galerkin (RKDLEG) methods on the cubed-sphere grid for the shallow water equations (SWEs). Instead of using the dimensional splitting method or solving one-dimensional Riemann problem in the direction normal to the cell interface, the RKDLEG methods are built on genuinely multi-dimensional approximate local evolution operator of the locally linearized SWEs on a sphere by considering all bicharacteristic directions. Several numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the accuracy and performance of our RKDLEG methods, in comparison to the Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method with Godunov's flux etc.

We analyze in this paper the pressure splitting scheme of a partitioned semi-implicit coupling algorithm for fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation. The semi-implicit coupling algorithm is developed on the ground of the artificial compressibility characteristic-based split (AC-CBS) scheme that serves not only for the fluid subsystem but also for the global FSI system. As the dual-time stepping procedure recommended for quasi-incompressible flows is incorporated into the implicit coupling stage, the fluctuating pressure may be unusually susceptible to the AC coefficient. Moreover, it is not trivial to devise an optimal AC formulation for pressure estimation. Instead, we consider a stabilized second-order pressure splitting scheme in the AC-CBS-based partitioned semi-implicit coupling algorithm. Computer simulation of a benchmark FSI experiment demonstrates that good agreement is exposed between the available and present data.

How to effectively simulate the interaction between fluid and solid elements of different sizes remains to be challenging. The discrete element method (DEM) has been used to deal with the interactions between solid elements of various shapes and sizes, while the material point method (MPM) has been developed to handle the multiphase (solid-liquid-gas) interactions involving failure evolution. A combined MPM-DEM procedure is proposed to take advantage of both methods so that the interaction between solid elements and fluid particles in a container could be better simulated. In the proposed procedure, large solid elements are discretized by the DEM, while the fluid motion is computed using the MPM. The contact forces between solid elements and rigid walls are calculated using the DEM. The interaction between solid elements and fluid particles are calculated via an interfacial scheme within the MPM framework. With a focus on the boundary condition effect, the proposed procedure is illustrated by representative examples, which demonstrates its potential for a certain type of engineering problems.

This paper is concerned with numerical methods for the Navier-Stokes-Nernst-Planck-Poisson equation system. The main goal is to construct and analyze some stable time stepping schemes for the time discretization and use a spectral method for the spatial discretization. The main contribution of the paper includes: 1) an useful stability inequality for the weak solution is derived; 2) a first order time stepping scheme is constructed, and the non-negativity of the concentration components of the discrete solution is proved. This is an important property since the exact solution shares the same property. Moreover, the stability of the scheme is established, together with a stability condition on the time step size; 3) a modified first order scheme is proposed in order to decouple the calculation of the velocity and pressure in the fluid field. This new scheme equally preserves the non-negativity of the discrete concentration solution, and is stable under a similar stability condition; 4) a stabilization technique is introduced to make the above mentioned schemes stable without restriction condition on the time step size; 5) finally we construct a second order finite difference scheme in time and spectral discretization in space. The numerical tests carried out in the paper show that all the proposed schemes possess some desirable properties, such as conditionally/unconditionally stability, first/second order convergence, non-negativity of the discrete concentrations, and so on.

The lattice Boltzmann method is employed to simulate the steady flow in a two-dimensional lid-driven semi-elliptical cavity. Reynolds number (Re) and vertical-to-horizontal semi-axis ratio (D) are in the range of 500-5000 and 0.1-4, respectively. The effects of Re and D on the vortex structure and pressure field are investigated, and the evolutionary features of the vortex structure with Re and D are analyzed in detail. Simulation results show that the vortex structure and its evolutionary features significantly depend on Re and D. The steady flow is characterized by one vortex in the semi-elliptical cavity when both Re and D are small. As Re increases, the appearance of the vortex structure becomes more complex. When D is less than 1, increasing D makes the large vortexes more round, and the evolution of the vortexes with D becomes more complex with increasing Re. When D is greater than 1, the steady flow consists of a series of large vortexes which superimpose on each other. As Re and D increase, the number of the large vortexes increases. Additionally, a small vortex in the upper-left corner of the semi-elliptical cavity appears at a large Re and its size increases slowly as Re increases. The highest pressures appear in the upper-right corner and the pressure changes drastically in the upper-right region of the cavity. The total pressure differences in the semi-elliptical cavity with a fixed D decrease with increasing Re. In the region of themain vortex, the pressure contours nearly coincide with the streamlines, especially for the cavity flow with a large Re.

An investigation of natural convective flow and heat transfer inside a three dimensional rectangular cavity containing an array of discrete heat sources is carried out. The array consists of a row and columnwise regular arrangement of identical square shaped isoflux discrete heaters and is flush mounted on a vertical wall of the cavity. A symmetrical isothermal sink condition is maintained by cooling the cavity uniformly from either the opposite wall or the side walls or the top and bottom walls. The other walls of the cavity are maintained adiabatic. A finite volume method based on the SIMPLE algorithm and the power law scheme is used to solve the conservation equations. The parametric study covers the influence of pertinent parameters such as the Rayleigh number, the Prandtl number, side aspect ratio of the cavity and cavity heater ratio. A detailed fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics for the three cases are reported in terms of isothermal and velocity vector plots and Nusselt numbers. In general it is found that the overall heat transfer rate within the cavity for Ra=107 is maximum when the side aspect ratio of the cavity lies between 1.5 and 2. A more complex and peculiar flow pattern is observed in the presence of top and bottom cold walls which in turn introduces hot spots on the adiabatic walls. Their location and size are highly sensitive to the side aspect ratio of the cavity and hence offers more effective ways for passive heat removal.

In this paper, a diffuse-interface immersed boundary method (IBM) is proposed to treat three different thermal boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin) in thermal flow problems. The novel IBM is implemented combining with the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The present algorithm enforces the three types of thermal boundary conditions at the boundary points. Concretely speaking, the IBM for the Dirichlet boundary condition is implemented using an iterative method, and its main feature is to accurately satisfy the given temperature on the boundary. The Neumann and Robin boundary conditions are implemented in IBM by distributing the jump of the heat flux on the boundary to surrounding Eulerian points, and the jump is obtained by applying the jump interface conditions in the normal and tangential directions. A simple analysis of the computational accuracy of IBM is developed. The analysis indicates that the Taylor-Green vortices problem which was used in many previous studies is not an appropriate accuracy test example. The capacity of the present thermal immersed boundary method is validated using four numerical experiments: (1) Natural convection in a cavity with a circular cylinder in the center; (2) Flows over a heated cylinder; (3) Natural convection in a concentric horizontal cylindrical annulus; (4) Sedimentation of a single isothermal cold particle in a vertical channel. The numerical results show good agreements with the data in the previous literatures.