David C. Del Rey Fernandez

Longfei Gao, David C. Del Rey Fernandez, Mark Carpenter et al.

We consider the numerical simulation of the acoustic wave equations arising from seismic applications, for which staggered grid finite difference methods are popular choices due to their simplicity and efficiency. We relax the uniform grid restriction on finite difference methods and allow the grids to be block-wise uniform with nonconforming interfaces. In doing so, variations in the wave speeds of the subterranean media can be accounted for more efficiently. Staggered grid finite difference operators satisfying the summation-by-parts (SBP) property are devised to approximate the spatial derivatives appearing in the acoustic wave equation. These operators are applied within each block independently. The coupling between blocks is achieved through simultaneous approximation terms (SATs), which impose the interface condition weakly, i.e., by penalty. Ratio of the grid spacing of neighboring blocks is allowed to be rational number, for which specially designed interpolation formulas are presented. These interpolation formulas constitute key pieces of the simultaneous approximation terms. The overall discretization is shown to be energy-conserving and examined on test cases of both theoretical and practical interests, delivering accurate and stable simulation results.

Nail K. Yamaleev, David C. Del Rey Fernandez, Jialin Lou et al.

New entropy stable spectral collocations schemes of arbitrary order of accuracy are developed for the unsteady 3-D Euler and Navier-Stokes equations on dynamic unstructured grids. To take into account the grid motion and deformation, we use an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation. As a result, moving and deforming hexahedral grid elements are individually mapped onto a cube in the fixed reference system of coordinates. The proposed scheme is constructed by using the skew-symmetric form of the Navier-Stokes equations, which are discretized by using summation-by-parts spectral collocation operators that preserve the conservation properties of the original governing equations. Furthermore, the metric coefficients are approximated such that the geometric conservation laws (GCL) are satisfied exactly on both static and dynamic grids. To make the scheme entropy stable, a new entropy conservative flux is derived for the 3-D Euler and Navier-Stokes equations on dynamic unstructured grids. The new flux preserves the design order of accuracy of the original spectral collocation scheme and guarantees the entropy conservation on moving and deforming grids. We present numerical results demonstrating design order of accuracy and freestream preservation properties of the new schemes for both the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations on moving and deforming unstructured grids.

Lucas Friedrich, David C. Del Rey Fernandez, Andrew R. Winters et al.

Non-conforming numerical approximations offer increased flexibility for applications that require high resolution in a localized area of the computational domain or near complex geometries. Two key properties for non-conforming methods to be applicable to real world applications are conservation and energy stability. The summation-by-parts (SBP) property, which certain finite-difference and discontinuous Galerkin methods have, finds success for the numerical approximation of hyperbolic conservation laws, because the proofs of energy stability and conservation can discretely mimic the continuous analysis of partial differential equations. In addition, SBP methods can be developed with high-order accuracy, which is useful for simulations that contain multiple spatial and temporal scales. However, existing non-conforming SBP schemes result in a reduction of the overall degree of the scheme, which leads to a reduction in the order of the solution error. This loss of degree is due to the particular interface coupling through a simultaneous-approximation-term (SAT). We present in this work a novel class of SBP-SAT operators that maintain conservation, energy stability, and have no loss of the degree of the scheme for non-conforming approximations. The new \emph{degree preserving} discretizations require an ansatz that the norm matrix of the SBP operator is of a degree $\geq 2p$, in contrast to, for example, existing finite difference SBP operators, where the norm matrix is $2p-1$ accurate. We demonstrate the fundamental properties of the new scheme with rigorous mathematical analysis as well as numerical verification.