Numerical Simulation of Atmospheric Flow on Variable Grids Using the Galerkin Finite Element Method.

Abstract

A hypothesis is made that the Galerkin Finite Element Method (GFEM) offers a viable option to the traditional Finite Difference Method (FDM) for numerical weather prediction. The shallow water barotropic primitive equations are the forecast equations for all experiments. The hypothesis is tested by observing simple, analytic atmospheric wave propagation on uniform and variable mesh grids. Second, a strongly forced solution simulating small scale nonlinear interactions is evaluated for both the GFEM and FDM. Finally, a variable, moving grid for a GFEM model is compared to a uniform, higher resolution GFEM model for a strong vortex in a mean flow. The GFEM shows a better propagation for simple atmospheric waves and better prediction to a forced nonlinear solution than the FDM model. A moving variable grid follows an area of strong gradients while not generating noise in the transition zone. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1983
Accession Number
ADA128928

Entities

People

  • Donald E. Hinsman

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Birds
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Computational Science
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Finite Element Analysis
  • Geometry
  • Grids
  • Helmholtz Equations
  • High Resolution
  • Mathematics
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Partial Differential Equations
  • Shallow Water
  • Wave Propagation
  • Waveforms
  • Weather Forecasting

Readers

  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)