Manuel J. Castro

Manuel J. Castro, Philippe G. LeFloch, María Luz Muñoz-Ruiz et al.

We are interested in nonlinear hyperbolic systems in nonconservative form arising in fluid dynamics, and, for solutions containing shock waves, we investigate the convergence of finite difference schemes applied to such systems. According to Dal Maso, LeFloch, and Murat's theory, a shock wave theory for a given nonconservative system requires prescribing a priori a family of paths in the phase space. In the present paper, we consider schemes that are formally consistent with a given family of paths, and we investigate their limiting behavior as the mesh is refined. We generalize to systems a property established earlier by Hou and LeFloch for scalar conservation laws, and we prove that nonconservative schemes generate, at the level of the limiting hyperbolic system, a "convergence error" source-term which, provided the total variation of the approximations remains uniformly bounded, is a locally bounded measure. We discuss the role of the equivalent equation associated with a difference scheme; here, the distinction between scalar equations and systems appears most clearly since, for systems, the equivalent equation of a scheme that is formally path-consistent depends upon the prescribed family of paths. The core of this paper is devoted to investigate numerically the approximation of several models arising in fluid dynamics. For systems having nonconservative products associated with linearly degenerate characteristic fields, the convergence error vanishes. For some other models, this measure is evaluated very accurately, especially by plotting the shock curves associated with each scheme under consideration.

Elena Gaburro, Manuel J. Castro, Michael Dumbser

In this work we present a novel second order accurate well balanced Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite volume scheme on moving nonconforming meshes for the Euler equations of compressible gasdynamics with gravity in cylindrical coordinates. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is the capability of preserving many of the physical properties of the system exactly also on the discrete level: besides being conservative for mass, momentum and total energy, also any known steady equilibrium between pressure gradient, centrifugal force and gravity force can be exactly maintained up to machine precision. Perturbations around such equilibrium solutions are resolved with high accuracy and with minimal dissipation on moving contact discontinuities even for very long computational times. This is achieved by the novel combination of well balanced path-conservative finite volume schemes, that are expressly designed to deal with source terms written via nonconservative products, with ALE schemes on moving grids, which exhibit only very little numerical dissipation on moving contact waves. In particular, we have formulated a new HLL-type and a novel Osher-type flux that are both able to guarantee the well balancing in a gas cloud rotating around a central object. Moreover, to maintain a high level of quality of the moving mesh, we have adopted a nonconforming treatment of the sliding interfaces that appear due to the differential rotation. A large set of numerical tests has been carried out in order to check the accuracy of the method close and far away from the equilibrium, both, in one and two space dimensions.

Elena Gaburro, Michael Dumbser, Manuel J. Castro

In this paper, we present a novel second-order accurate Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite volume scheme on moving nonconforming polygonal grids, in order to avoid the typical mesh distortion caused by shear flows in Lagrangian-type methods. In our new approach the nonconforming element interfaces are not defined by the user, but they are automatically detected by the algorithm if the tangential velocity difference across an element interface is sufficiently large. The grid nodes that are sufficiently far away from a shear wave are moved with a standard node solver, while at the interface we insert a new set of nodes that can slide in a nonconforming manner. In this way, the elements on both sides of the shear wave can move with a different velocity, without producing highly distorted elements. The core of the proposed method is the use of a space-time conservation formulation in the construction of the final finite volume scheme, which completely avoids the need of an additional remapping stage and ensures that the geometric conservation law (GCL) is automatically satisfied. Moreover, the mesh quality remains high and, as a direct consequence, also the time step remains almost constant in time, even for highly sheared vortex flows. The accuracy of the new scheme has been further improved by incorporating a special well balancing technique that is able to maintain particular stationary solutions of the governing PDE system up to machine precision. A large set of numerical tests has been carried out in order to check the accuracy and the robustness of the new method. In particular we have compared the results for a steady vortex in equilibrium solved with a standard conforming ALE method and with our new nonconforming ALE scheme, to show that the new nonconforming scheme is able to avoid mesh distortion even after very long simulation times.

Elena Gaburro, Manuel J. Castro, Michael Dumbser

In this paper we propose an efficient second order well balanced finite volume method for modeling complex free surface flows at the aid of a simple diffuse interface method. The employed physical model is a two-phase model derived from the Baer-Nunziato system for compressible multi-phase flows. In particular, as proposed for the first time in Dumbser (2011), the number of equations is reduced from seven to three by assuming that the relative pressure of the gas with respect to the atmospheric reference pressure is zero, and that the gas momentum is negligible compared to the one of the liquid. The two-phase model does not make any of the classical assumptions of shallow water type systems, hence it does not neglect vertical accelerations and the free surface is not constraint to be a single-valued function, so even complex shapes as those of breaking waves can be properly captured. The resulting PDE system is solved by a novel well balanced path-conservative finite volume method on structured Cartesian grids, which is able to preserve exactly the equilibrium states even in the presence of obstacles. It furthermore automatically computes the location of the water-air interfaces, and assures low numerical dissipation at the free surface thanks to a novel Osher-Romberg-type Riemann solver. Finally, high computational performance is guaranteed by an efficient parallel implementation on a GPU-based platform that reaches the efficiency of twenty million of volumes processed per seconds and makes it possible to employ even very fine meshes. The validation of our new well balanced scheme is carried out by comparing the obtained numerical results against existing analytical, numerical and experimental reference solutions for a large number of test cases, among which oscillating elliptical drops, dambreak problems, breaking waves, over topping weir flows, and wave impact problems.

José M. Gallardo, Kleiton A. Schneider, Manuel J. Castro

We propose a general class of genuinely two-dimensional incomplete Riemann solvers for systems of conservation laws. In particular, extensions of Balsara's multidimensional HLL scheme [J. Comput. Phys. 231 (2012) 7476-7503] to two-dimensional PVM/RVM (Polynomial/Rational Viscosity Matrix) finite volume methods are considered. The numerical flux is constructed by assembling, at each edge of the computational mesh, a one-dimensional PVM/RVM flux with two purely two-dimensional PVM/RVM fluxes at vertices, which take into account transversal features of the flow. The proposed methods are applicable to general hyperbolic systems, although in this paper we focus on applications to magnetohydrodynamics. In particular, we propose an efficient technique for divergence cleaning of the magnetic field that provides good results when combined with our two-dimensional solvers. Several numerical tests including genuinely two-dimensional effects are presented to test the performances of the proposed schemes.