Artur Palha

Artur Palha, Marc Gerritsma

In this work we present a mimetic spectral element discretization for the 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations that in the limit of vanishing dissipation exactly preserves mass, kinetic energy, enstrophy and total vorticity on unstructured grids. The essential ingredients to achieve this are: (i) a velocity-vorticity formulation in rotational form, (ii) a sequence of function spaces capable of exactly satisfying the divergence free nature of the velocity field, and (iii) a conserving time integrator. Proofs for the exact discrete conservation properties are presented together with numerical test cases on highly irregular grids.

Jasper Kreeft, Artur Palha, Marc Gerritsma

In this paper higher order mimetic discretizations are introduced which are firmly rooted in the geometry in which the variables are defined. The paper shows how basic constructs in differential geometry have a discrete counterpart in algebraic topology. Generic maps which switch between the continuous differential forms and discrete cochains will be discussed and finally a realization of these ideas in terms of mimetic spectral elements is presented, based on projections for which operations at the finite dimensional level commute with operations at the continuous level. The two types of orientation (inner- and outer-orientation) will be introduced at the continuous level, the discrete level and the preservation of orientation will be demonstrated for the new mimetic operators. The one-to-one correspondence between the continuous formulation and the discrete algebraic topological setting, provides a characterization of the oriented discrete boundary of the domain. The Hodge decomposition at the continuous, discrete and finite dimensional level will be presented. It appears to be a main ingredient of the structure in this framework.

David Lee, Artur Palha, Marc Gerritsma

A mixed mimetic spectral element method is applied to solve the rotating shallow water equations. The mixed method uses the recently developed spectral element histopolation functions, which exactly satisfy the fundamental theorem of calculus with respect to the standard Lagrange basis functions in one dimension. These are used to construct tensor product solution spaces which satisfy the generalized Stokes theorem, as well as the annihilation of the gradient operator by the curl and the curl by the divergence. This allows for the exact conservation of first order moments (mass, vorticity), as well as quadratic moments (energy, potential enstrophy), subject to the truncation error of the time stepping scheme. The continuity equation is solved in the strong form, such that mass conservation holds point wise, while the momentum equation is solved in the weak form such that vorticity is globally conserved. While mass, vorticity and energy conservation hold for any quadrature rule, potential enstrophy conservation is dependent on exact spatial integration. The method possesses a weak form statement of geostrophic balance due to the compatible nature of the solution spaces and arbitrarily high order spatial error convergence.

Marc Gerritsma, Artur Palha, Varun Jain et al.

This paper addresses the topological structure of steady, anisotropic, inhomogeneous diffusion problems. Two discrete formulations: a) mixed and b) direct formulations are discussed. Differential operators are represented by sparse incidence matrices, while weighted mass matrices play the role of metric-dependent Hodge matrices. The resulting mixed formulations are point-wise divergence-free if the right hand side function f = 0. The method is inf-sup stable and displays optimal convergence on orthogonal and non-affine grids.

Marc Gerritsma, Varun Jain, Yi Zhang et al.

In this paper we will consider two curl-curl equation in two dimensions. One curl-curl problem for a scalar quantity $F$ and one problem for a vector field $\bf{E}$. For Dirichlet boundary conditions $\bf{n} \times \bf{E} =$ $ \hat{E}_{\dashv}$ on $\bf{E}$ and Neumann boundary conditions $\bf{n} \times \mbox{curl}$ $F=\hat{E}_{\dashv}$, we expect the solutions to satisfy $\bf{E}=\mbox{curl}$ $F$. When we use algebraic dual polynomial representations, these identities continue to hold at the discrete level. Equivalence will be proved and illustrated with a computational example.

Varun Jain, Yi Zhang, Joël Fisser et al.

We present a hybrid mimetic spectral element formulation for Darcy flow. The discrete representations for 1) conservation of mass, and 2) inter-element continuity, are topological relations that lead to sparse matrix systems. These constraints are independent of the element size and shape, and thus invariant under mesh transformations. The resultant algebraic system is extremely sparse even for high degree polynomial basis. Furthermore, the system can be efficiently assembled and solved for each element separately.

David Lee, Artur Palha

In a previous article [J. Comp. Phys. $\mathbf{357}$ (2018) 282-304], the mixed mimetic spectral element method was used to solve the rotating shallow water equations in an idealized geometry. Here the method is extended to a smoothly varying, non-affine, cubed sphere geometry. The differential operators are encoded topologically via incidence matrices due to the use of spectral element edge functions to construct tensor product solution spaces in $H(\mathrm{rot})$, $H(\mathrm{div})$ and $L_2$. These incidence matrices commute with respect to the metric terms in order to ensure that the mimetic properties are preserved independent of the geometry. This ensures conservation of mass, vorticity and energy for the rotating shallow water equations using inexact quadrature on the cubed sphere. The spectral convergence of errors are similarly preserved on the cubed sphere, with the generalized Piola transformation used to construct the metric terms for the physical field quantities.

Artur Palha, Lento Manickathan, Carlos Simao Ferreira et al.

Currently, Eulerian flow solvers are very efficient in accurately resolving flow structures near solid boundaries. On the other hand, they tend to be diffusive and to dampen high-intensity vortical structures after a short distance away from solid boundaries. The use of high order methods and fine grids, although alleviating this problem, gives rise to large systems of equations that are expensive to solve. Lagrangian solvers, as the regularized vortex particle method, have shown to eliminate (in practice) the diffusion in the wake. As a drawback, the modelling of solid boundaries is less accurate, more complex and costly than with Eulerian solvers (due to the isotropy of its computational elements). Given the drawbacks and advantages of both Eulerian and Lagrangian solvers the combination of both methods, giving rise to a hybrid solver, is advantageous. The main idea behind the hybrid solver presented is the following. In a region close to solid boundaries the flow is solved with an Eulerian solver, where the full Navier-Stokes equations are solved (possibly with an arbitrary turbulence model or DNS, the limitations being the computational power and the physical properties of the flow), outside of that region the flow is solved with a vortex particle method. In this work we present this hybrid scheme and verify it numerically on known 2D benchmark cases: dipole flow, flow around a cylinder and flow around a stalled airfoil. The success in modelling these flow conditions presents this hybrid approach as a promising alternative, bridging the gap between highly resolved and computationally intensive Eulerian CFD simulations and fast but less resolved Lagrangian simulations.

Artur Palha, Marc Gerritsma

There is a growing interest in the conservation of invariants when numerically solving a system of ordinary differential equations. Methods that exactly preserve these quantities in time are known as geometric integrators. In this paper we apply the recently developed mimetic framework to the solution of a system of first order ordinary differential equations. Depending on the discrete Hodge-* employed, two classes of arbitrary order time integrators are derived. It is shown that the one based on a canonical Hodge-* results in a symplectic integrator, whereas the one based on a Galerkin Hodge-* results in an energy preserving integrator. A set of numerical tests confirms these theoretical results.