Fundamentals of Computational Fluid

Dynamics
Harvard Lomax and Thomas H. Pulliam
NASA Ames Research Center
David W. Zingg
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
August 26, 1999
Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 Problem Specication and Geometry Preparation . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 Selection of Governing Equations and Boundary Conditions . 3
1.2.3 Selection of Gridding Strategy and Numerical Method . . . . 3
1.2.4 Assessment and Interpretation of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 CONSERVATION LAWS AND THE MODEL EQUATIONS 7
2.1 Conservation Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 The Navier-Stokes and Euler Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 The Linear Convection Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.1 Dierential Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.2 Solution in Wave Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 The Diusion Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4.1 Dierential Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4.2 Solution in Wave Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Linear Hyperbolic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.6 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3 FINITE-DIFFERENCE APPROXIMATIONS 21
3.1 Meshes and Finite-Dierence Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Space Derivative Approximations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3 Finite-Dierence Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3.1 Point Dierence Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3.2 Matrix Dierence Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3.3 Periodic Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3.4 Circulant Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
iii
 3.4 Constructing Dierencing Schemes of Any Order . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.4.1 Taylor Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.4.2 Generalization of Dierence Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.4.3 Lagrange and Hermite Interpolation Polynomials . . . . . . . 35
3.4.4 Practical Application of Pade Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4.5 Other Higher-Order Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.5 Fourier Error Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.5.1 Application to a Spatial Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.6 Dierence Operators at Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.6.1 The Linear Convection Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.6.2 The Diusion Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.7 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4 THE SEMI-DISCRETE APPROACH 51
4.1 Reduction of PDE's to ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.1.1 The Model ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.1.2 The Generic Matrix Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2 Exact Solutions of Linear ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.2.1 Eigensystems of Semi-Discrete Linear Forms . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.2.2 Single ODE's of First- and Second-Order . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2.3 Coupled First-Order ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.4 General Solution of Coupled ODE's with Complete Eigensystems 59
4.3 Real Space and Eigenspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.3.1 Denition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.3.2 Eigenvalue Spectrums for Model ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3.3 Eigenvectors of the Model Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.3.4 Solutions of the Model ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.4 The Representative Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.5 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5 FINITE-VOLUME METHODS 71
5.1 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.2 Model Equations in Integral Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.2.1 The Linear Convection Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.2.2 The Diusion Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.3 One-Dimensional Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.3.1 A Second-Order Approximation to the Convection Equation . 75
5.3.2 A Fourth-Order Approximation to the Convection Equation . 77
5.3.3 A Second-Order Approximation to the Diusion Equation . . 78
5.4 A Two-Dimensional Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
 5.5 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6 TIME-MARCHING METHODS FOR ODE'S 85
6.1 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6.2 Converting Time-Marching Methods to O
E's . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.3 Solution of Linear O
E's With Constant Coecients . . . . . . . . . 88
6.3.1 First- and Second-Order Dierence Equations . . . . . . . . . 89
6.3.2 Special Cases of Coupled First-Order Equations . . . . . . . . 90
6.4 Solution of the Representative O
E's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.4.1 The Operational Form and its Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.4.2 Examples of Solutions to Time-Marching O
E's . . . . . . . . 92
6.5 The   Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.5.1 Establishing the Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.5.2 The Principal -Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.5.3 Spurious -Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.5.4 One-Root Time-Marching Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.6 Accuracy Measures of Time-Marching Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.6.1 Local and Global Error Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.6.2 Local Accuracy of the Transient Solution (er ; jj ; er! ) . . . . 98
6.6.3 Local Accuracy of the Particular Solution (er ) . . . . . . . . 99
6.6.4 Time Accuracy For Nonlinear Applications . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.6.5 Global Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.7 Linear Multistep Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.7.1 The General Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.7.2 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.7.3 Two-Step Linear Multistep Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.8 Predictor-Corrector Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.9 Runge-Kutta Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.10 Implementation of Implicit Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.10.1 Application to Systems of Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.10.2 Application to Nonlinear Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.10.3 Local Linearization for Scalar Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
6.10.4 Local Linearization for Coupled Sets of Nonlinear Equations . 115
6.11 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7 STABILITY OF LINEAR SYSTEMS 121
7.1 Dependence on the Eigensystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
7.2 Inherent Stability of ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.2.1 The Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.2.2 Complete Eigensystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
 7.2.3 Defective Eigensystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.3 Numerical Stability of O
E 's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.3.1 The Criterion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.3.2 Complete Eigensystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.3.3 Defective Eigensystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.4 Time-Space Stability and Convergence of O
E's . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.5 Numerical Stability Concepts in the Complex -Plane . . . . . . . . . 128
7.5.1 -Root Traces Relative to the Unit Circle . . . . . . . . . . . 128
7.5.2 Stability for Small
t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
7.6 Numerical Stability Concepts in the Complex h Plane . . . . . . . . 135
7.6.1 Stability for Large h. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7.6.2 Unconditional Stability, A-Stable Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 136
7.6.3 Stability Contours in the Complex h Plane. . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.7 Fourier Stability Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.7.1 The Basic Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.7.2 Some Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
7.7.3 Relation to Circulant Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.8 Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.9 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
8 CHOICE OF TIME-MARCHING METHODS 149
8.1 Stiness Denition for ODE's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
8.1.1 Relation to -Eigenvalues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
8.1.2 Driving and Parasitic Eigenvalues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
8.1.3 Stiness Classications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
8.2 Relation of Stiness to Space Mesh Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
8.3 Practical Considerations for Comparing Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 153
8.4 Comparing the Eciency of Explicit Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
8.4.1 Imposed Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
8.4.2 An Example Involving Diusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
8.4.3 An Example Involving Periodic Convection . . . . . . . . . . . 155
8.5 Coping With Stiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
8.5.1 Explicit Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
8.5.2 Implicit Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.5.3 A Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.6 Steady Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.7 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
9 RELAXATION METHODS 163
9.1 Formulation of the Model Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
9.1.1 Preconditioning the Basic Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
9.1.2 The Model Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
9.2 Classical Relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
9.2.1 The Delta Form of an Iterative Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
9.2.2 The Converged Solution, the Residual, and the Error . . . . . 168
9.2.3 The Classical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
9.3 The ODE Approach to Classical Relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
9.3.1 The Ordinary Dierential Equation Formulation . . . . . . . . 170
9.3.2 ODE Form of the Classical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
9.4 Eigensystems of the Classical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
9.4.1 The Point-Jacobi System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
9.4.2 The Gauss-Seidel System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
9.4.3 The SOR System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
9.5 Nonstationary Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
9.6 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
10 MULTIGRID 191
10.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
10.1.1 Eigenvector and Eigenvalue Identication with Space Frequencies191
10.1.2 Properties of the Iterative Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
10.2 The Basic Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
10.3 A Two-Grid Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
10.4 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
11 NUMERICAL DISSIPATION 203
11.1 One-Sided First-Derivative Space Dierencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
11.2 The Modied Partial Dierential Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
11.3 The Lax-Wendro Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
11.4 Upwind Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
11.4.1 Flux-Vector Splitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
11.4.2 Flux-Dierence Splitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
11.5 Articial Dissipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
11.6 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
12 SPLIT AND FACTORED FORMS 217
12.1 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
12.2 Factoring Physical Representations | Time Splitting . . . . . . . . . 218
12.3 Factoring Space Matrix Operators in 2{D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
 12.3.1 Mesh Indexing Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
12.3.2 Data Bases and Space Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
12.3.3 Data Base Permutations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
12.3.4 Space Splitting and Factoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
12.4 Second-Order Factored Implicit Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
12.5 Importance of Factored Forms in 2 and 3 Dimensions . . . . . . . . . 226
12.6 The Delta Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
12.7 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
13 LINEAR ANALYSIS OF SPLIT AND FACTORED FORMS 233
13.1 The Representative Equation for Circulant Operators . . . . . . . . . 233
13.2 Example Analysis of Circulant Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
13.2.1 Stability Comparisons of Time-Split Methods . . . . . . . . . 234
13.2.2 Analysis of a Second-Order Time-Split Method . . . . . . . . 237
13.3 The Representative Equation for Space-Split Operators . . . . . . . . 238
13.4 Example Analysis of 2-D Model Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
13.4.1 The Unfactored Implicit Euler Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
13.4.2 The Factored Nondelta Form of the Implicit Euler Method . . 243
13.4.3 The Factored Delta Form of the Implicit Euler Method . . . . 243
13.4.4 The Factored Delta Form of the Trapezoidal Method . . . . . 244
13.5 Example Analysis of the 3-D Model Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
13.6 Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
A USEFUL RELATIONS AND DEFINITIONS FROM LINEAR AL-
GEBRA 249
A.1 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
A.2 Denitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
A.3 Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
A.4 Eigensystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
A.5 Vector and Matrix Norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
B SOME PROPERTIES OF TRIDIAGONAL MATRICES 257
B.1 Standard Eigensystem for Simple Tridiagonals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
B.2 Generalized Eigensystem for Simple Tridiagonals . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
B.3 The Inverse of a Simple Tridiagonal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
B.4 Eigensystems of Circulant Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
B.4.1 Standard Tridiagonals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
B.4.2 General Circulant Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
B.5 Special Cases Found From Symmetries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
B.6 Special Cases Involving Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
C THE HOMOGENEOUS PROPERTY OF THE EULER EQUATIONS265