Breadcrumb
Numerical study of high-Reynolds number flow with high-order accurate meshless vortex method
Principal Investigator: Lorena A. Barba
Amount: £209238
Starts: June 2007
Ends: July 2010
Description
The proposed research programme aims at developing a high-order, high-accuracy, fully meshfree method for simulation of high-Reynolds number flows, and moreover introduces these key innovations: deforming basis functions, multi-scale capability, and novel boundary representations.
Meshfree simulation is an important area of development in computational science, and great interest has been placed in it recently, as evidenced by international conferences and new publications. Meshfree methods don't require sophisticated data structures and algorithms for the generation and maintenance of a grid. This is often time consuming, especially with complex geometries or if mesh adaptation is needed. The traditional methods of CFD are based on discretizations on a mesh in the fluid domain: finite difference, finite volume and spectral methods alike. The vortex method, in contrast, utilizes unconnected particles which are advected with the fluid. The method is characterized by a very low numerical diffusion, because the nonlinear term of the Navier-Stokes equations is converted into a set of ordinary differential equations (for the particle trajectories). This feature makes the vortex method ideally suited for the study of high-Reynolds number unsteady flows.