Dealing with Stiffness in Low-Mach Number Flows

Friday, October 3, 2008 - 1:25pm - 2:25pm
Vincent 570
Caroline Gatti-Bono (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Numerical simulation of low-Mach number flows presents challenges because of the stiffness introduced by the disparity of time scales between acoustic and convective motions. In particular, the acoustic, high-speed modes often contain little energy but determine the time step for explicit schemes through the CFL condition. A natural idea is therefore to separate the acoustic modes from the rest of the solution and to treat them implicitly, while the advective motions are treated explicitly or semi-implicitly.

In this talk, we present a numerical allspeed algorithm that respects low-Mach number asymptotics but is suitable for any Mach number. We use a splitting method based on a Hodge/Helmholtz decomposition of the velocities to separate the fast acoustic dynamics from the slower anelastic dynamics. The acoustic waves are treated implicitly, while the advection is treated semi-implicitly. The splitting mechanism is demonstrated on two applications. The first application is a combustive flow, where Euler equations are completed by an enthalpy evolution equation. Then, we present a stratified atmospheric flow where the presence of gravity waves adds one more degree of complexity. Benchmark results are presented that compare well with the literature.
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