Under-Resolution and Diagnostics in Spectral Simulations of Complex-Geometry Flows

Abstract

Large-scale simulations are often under-resolved at some level, but they are still useful in extracting both qualitative and quantitative information about the flow. In order to use such results effectively we need to characterize the numerical uncertainty of under-resolved simulations. However, different numerical methods exhibit different, behavior, and spectral-based methods in particular may over-predict fluctuations both in amplitude and frequency due to their very low artificial dissipation in contrast with finite differences. In this chapter, we provide insight into under-resolved spectral simulations and document several diagnostic signs of under-resolution for spectral/hp element methods. We first review the state-of-the-art in direct numerical simulation and present a new class of spectral methods on unstructured grids for handling complex-geometry compressible and incompressible flows. We the focus on the effects of under-resolving the nonlinear contributions, and finally we present prototype cases for both transitional and turbulent flows.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA461869

Entities

People

  • George Karniadakis
  • Robert M. Kirby

Organizations

  • Brown University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Boundary Layer
  • Channel Flow
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Convection
  • Differential Equations
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Geometry
  • Incompressible Flow
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Reynolds Number
  • Simulations
  • Turbulent Flow
  • Turbulent Mixing
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)