We describe and review non oscillatory residual distribution schemes that are rather natural extension of high order finite volume schemes when a special emphasis is put on the structure of the computational stencil. We provide their connections with standard stabilized finite element and discontinuous Galerkin schemes, show that their are really non oscillatory. We also discuss the extension to these methods to parabolic problems. We also draw some research perspectives.

The purpose of this article is to summarize our recent progress in high-order and high accurate CFD methods for flow problems with complex grids as well as to discuss the engineering prospects in using these methods. Despite the rapid development of high-order algorithms in CFD, the applications of high-order and high accurate methods on complex configurations are still limited. One of the main reasons which hinder the widely applications of these methods is the complexity of grids. Many aspects which can be neglected for low-order schemes must be treated carefully for high-order ones when the configurations are complex. In order to implement high-order finite difference schemes on complex multi-block grids, the geometric conservation law and block-interface conditions are discussed. A conservative metric method is applied to calculate the grid derivatives, and a characteristic-based interface condition is employed to fulfil high-order multi-block computing. The fifth-order WCNS-E-5 proposed by Deng is applied to simulate flows with complex grids, including a double-delta wing, a transonic airplane configuration, and a hypersonic X-38 configuration. The results in this paper and the references show pleasant prospects in engineering-oriented applications of high-order schemes.

This work is a follow-up to our previous work. It extends and complements, both theoretically and experimentally, the results presented there. Under consideration is the homogenization of a model of a weakly random heterogeneous material. The material consists of a reference periodic material randomly perturbed by another periodic material, so that its homogenized behavior is close to that of the reference material. We consider laws for the random perturbations more general than in. We prove the validity of an asymptotic expansion in a certain class of settings. We also extend the formal approach introduced in. Our perturbative approach shares common features with a defect-type theory of solid state physics. The computational efficiency of the approach is demonstrated.

In, Maire developed a class of cell-centered Lagrangian schemes for solving Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics in cylindrical coordinates. These schemes use a node-based discretization of the numerical fluxes. The control volume version has several distinguished properties, including the conservation of mass, momentum and total energy and compatibility with the geometric conservation law (GCL). However it also has a limitation in that it cannot preserve spherical symmetry for one-dimensional spherical flow. An alternative is also given to use the first order area-weighted approach which can ensure spherical symmetry, at the price of sacrificing conservation of momentum. In this paper, we apply the methodology proposed in our recent work to the first order control volume scheme of Maire in to obtain the spherical symmetry property. The modified scheme can preserve one-dimensional spherical symmetry in a two-dimensional cylindrical geometry when computed on an equal-angle-zoned initial grid, and meanwhile it maintains its original good properties such as conservation and GCL. Several two-dimensional numerical examples in cylindrical coordinates are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the scheme in terms of symmetry, non-oscillation and robustness properties.

The thermodynamic properties and some critical properties of the planar rotator model with chiral Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya (DM) interaction on triangular lattice are analyzed using a hybrid Monte Carlo method. It has been shown that there is a XY-like Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in this model. The ground state of this spiral system and the effects of size mismatch are also discussed.

A coupled model, capable of simulating transonic flow, solid heat conduction, species transport, and gas radiation, is developed that provides better computational treatment of infrared radiation from hot exhaust nozzles. The modeling of gas radiation is based on a statistical narrow-band correlated-k analysis, whose parameters are deduced from the HITEMP line-by-line database. To improve computational efficiency, several methods are employed. A mixed analytical-numerical algorithm is described for the stiffness of the two-equation turbulence model and an alternating direction implicit pretreatment for the ill-conditioned matrix appearing in the coupled problem of flow and solid heat conduction. Moreover, an improved multigrid method and a symmetry plane treatment of the radiation transfer-energy equations are also introduced. Four numerical simulations are given to confirm the efficiency and accuracy of the numerical method. Finally, an account of the aerothermodynamics and infrared characteristics for two types of nozzles are presented. The infrared radiation intensity of the Chevron ejecting nozzle is clearly smaller than that of the common axisymmetric ejecting nozzle. All computations can be performed on a personal computer.

Due to α radioactive decay Pu is vulnerable to aging. The behavior of He in Pu is the foundation for understanding Pu self-radiation damage aging. Molecular dynamics technique is performed to investigate the behavior of defects, the interaction between He and defects, the processes of initial nucleation and growth of He bubble and the dependence of He bubble on the macroscopical properties of Pu. Modified embedded atom method, Morse pair potential and the Lennard-Jones pair potential are used for describing the interactions of Pu-Pu, Pu-He and He-He, respectively. The main calculated results show that He atoms can combine with vacancies to form Hevacancy cluster (i.e., the precursor of He bubble) during the process of self-radiation as a result of high binding energy of an interstitial He atom to vacancy; He bubble’s growth can be dominated by the mechanism of punching out of dislocation loop; the swelling induced by He bubble is very small; grain boundaries give rise to an energetically more favorable zone for the interstitial He atom and self-interstitial atom accumulation than for vacancy accumulation; the process of He release can be identified as the formation of release channel induced by the cracking of He bubble and surface structure.

As a spatially extended dissipative system with strong nonlinearity the radio-frequency (rf) dielectric-barrier discharges (DBDs) at atmospheric pressure possess complex spatiotemporal nonlinear behaviors. In this paper, the time-domain nonlinear behaviors of rf DBD in atmospheric argon are studied numerically by a one-dimensional fluid model. Simulation results show that, under appropriate controlling parameters, the rf DBD can undergo a transition from single-period state to chaos through period doubling bifurcation with increasing discharge time, i.e., the regular periodic oscillation and chaos can coexist in a long time series of the atmospheric-pressure rf DBD. With increasing applied voltage amplitude, the duration of the periodic oscillation reduces gradually and chaotic zone increases, and finally the whole discharge series becomes completely chaotic state. This is different from conventional period doubling route to chaos. Moreover, the spatial characteristics of rf period-doubling discharge and chaos, as well as the parameter range of various discharge behaviors occurring are also investigated in this paper.

A review is presented on our recent Vlasov-Fokker-Planck (VFP) simulation code development and applications for high-power laser-plasma interactions. Numerical schemes are described for solving the kinetic VFP equation with both electron-electron and electron-ion collisions in one-spatial and two-velocity (1D2V) coordinates. They are based on the positive and flux conservation method and the finite volume method, and these two methods can insure the particle number conservation. Our simulation code can deal with problems in high-power laser/beam-plasma interactions, where highly non-Maxwellian electron distribution functions usually develop and the widely-used perturbation theories with the weak anisotropy assumption of the electron distribution function are no longer in point. We present some new results on three typical problems: firstly the plasma current generation in strong direct current electric fields beyond Spitzer-Härm’s transport theory, secondly the inverse bremsstrahlung absorption at high laser intensity beyond Langdon’s theory, and thirdly the heat transport with steep temperature and/or density gradients in laser-produced plasma. Finally, numerical parameters, performance, the particle number conservation, and the energy conservation in these simulations are provided.

This paper studies the numerical simulations for the Cahn-Hilliard equation which describes a phase separation phenomenon. The numerical simulation of the Cahn-Hilliard model needs very long time to reach the steady state, and therefore large time-stepping methods become useful. The main objective of this work is to construct the unconditionally energy stable finite difference scheme so that the large time steps can be used in the numerical simulations. The equation is discretized by the central difference scheme in space and fully implicit second-order scheme in time. The proposed scheme is proved to be unconditionally energy stable and mass-conservative. An error estimate for the numerical solution is also obtained with second order in both space and time. By using this energy stable scheme, an adaptive time-stepping strategy is proposed, which selects time steps adaptively based on the variation of the free energy against time. The numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the adaptive time-stepping approach.

We introduce and study a parallel domain decomposition algorithm for the simulation of blood flow in compliant arteries using a fully-coupled system of nonlinear partial differential equations consisting of a linear elasticity equation and the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with a resistive outflow boundary condition. The system is discretized with a finite element method on unstructured moving meshes and solved by a Newton-Krylov algorithm preconditioned with an overlapping restricted additive Schwarz method. The resistive outflow boundary condition plays an interesting role in the accuracy of the blood flow simulation and we provide a numerical comparison of its accuracy with the standard pressure type boundary condition. We also discuss the parallel performance of the implicit domain decomposition method for solving the fully coupled nonlinear system on a supercomputer with a few hundred processors.

A localized flexible airfoil at low Reynolds numbers is modeled and the aerodynamic performance is analyzed numerically. With characteristic based split scheme, a fluid solver for two dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is developed under the ALE framework, coupled with the theory of shallow arch, which is approximated by Galerkin method. Further, the interactions between the unsteady flow and the shallow arch are studied in detail. In particular, the effect of the self-excited vibration of the structure on aerodynamic performance of the airfoil is investigated deeply at various angles of attack. The results show that the lift-to-drag ratio has been increased greatly compared with the rigid airfoil. Finally, the relationship between the self-excited vibration and the evolution of the flow is analyzed using FFT tools.

Particle dynamics in a turbulent channel flow is considered. The effects of particle concentration and Reynolds number on the particle velocity statistics are investigated. Four different particle response times, τ+=1, 5, 30 and 100, are examined for three different Reynolds numbers, Re*=200, 360 and 790 (based on channel height and friction velocity). The particle concentration evolves with time and statistics obtained during three different sampling periods might be distinctly different. The mean and fluctuating particle velocities are substantially affected both by the particle response time and by the Reynolds number of the flow.

The swimming of a 3D fish-like body with finlets is numerically investigated at Re = 1000 (the Reynolds number is based on the uniform upstream flow and the length of the fish-like body). The finlets are simply modeled as thin rigid rectangular plates that undulate with the body. The wake structures and the flow around the caudal peduncle are studied. The finlets redirect the local flow across the caudal peduncle but the vortical structures in the wake are almost not affected by the finlets. Improvement of hydrodynamic performance has not been found in the simulation based on this simple model. The present numerical result is in agreement with that of the work of Nauen and Lauder [J. Exp. Biol., 204 (2001), pp. 2251-2263] and partially supports the hypothesis of Webb [Bull. Fish. Res. Bd. Can., 190 (1975), pp. 1-159].

A new class of supersonic nonequilibrium flows is studied on the basis of solving the Boltzmann and model kinetic equations with the aim to consider new non-linear structures in open systems and to study anomalous transfer properties in relaxation zones. The Unified Flow Solver is applied for numerical simulations. Simple gases and gases with inner degrees of freedom are considered. The experimental data related to the influence of the so-called optical lattices on the supersonic molecular beams are considered and numerical analysis of the nonequilibrium states obtained on this basis is made. The nonuniform relaxation problem with these distributions is simulated numerically and anomalous transport is confirmed. The conditions for strong changes of the temperature in the anomalous transfer zones are discussed and are realized in computations.

We apply in this study an area preserving level set method to simulate gas/water interface flow. For the sake of accuracy, the spatial derivative terms in the equations of motion for an incompressible fluid flow are approximated by the fifth-order accurate upwinding combined compact difference (UCCD) scheme. This scheme development employs two coupled equations to calculate the first- and second-order derivative terms in the momentum equations. For accurately predicting the level set value, the interface tracking scheme is also developed to minimize phase error of the first-order derivative term shown in the pure advection equation. For the purpose of retaining the long-term accurate Hamiltonian in the advection equation for the level set function, the time derivative term is discretized by the sixth-order accurate symplectic Runge-Kutta scheme. Also, to keep as a distance function for ensuring the front having a finite thickness for all time, the re-initialization equation is used. For the verification of the optimized UCCD scheme for the pure advection equation, two benchmark problems have been chosen to investigate in this study. The level set method with excellent area conservation property proposed for capturing the interface in incompressible fluid flows is also verified by solving the dam-break, Rayleigh-Taylor instability, two-bubble rising in water, and droplet falling problems.

In the present work adaptation in meshless framework is proposed. The grid adaptation or mesh adaptation is quite well developed area in case of conventional grid based solvers and is popularly known as Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). In such cases the adaptation is done by subdividing the cells or elements into finer cells or elements. In case of meshless methods there are no cells or elements but only a cloud of points. In this work we propose to achieve the meshless adaptation by locally refining the point density in the regions demanding higher resolution. This results into an adaptive enriched cloud of points. We call this method as Adaptive Cloud Refinement (ACR). The meshless solvers need connectivity information, which is a set of neighboring nodes. It is crucial part of meshless solvers. Obviously because of refining point density, the connectivity of nodes in such regions gets modified and hence has to be updated. An efficient connectivity update must exploit the fact that the node distribution would be largely unaffected except the region of adaptation. Hence connectivity updating needs to be done locally, only in these regions. In this paper we also present an extremely fast algorithm to update connectivity over adapted cloud called as ACU (Automatic Connectivity Update).

Numerical simulations using CLSVOF (coupled level set and volume of fluid) method are performed to investigate the coalescence and splashing regimes when a spherical water drop hits on the water surface with an impingement angle. Impingement angle is the angle between the velocity vector of primary drop and the normal vector to water surface. The effect of impingement angle, impact velocity and the height of target liquid are carried out. The impingement angle is varied from 0° to 90° showing the gradual change in phenomena. The formation of ship pro like shape, liquid sheet, secondary drops and crater are seen. Crater height, crater displacement, crown height and crown angle are calculated and the change in the parameters with change in impingement angle is noted.