International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids

Finaud‐Guyot, P.; Delenne, C.; Lhomme, J.; Guinot, V.; Llovel, C.

doi: 10.1002/fld.2066pmid: N/A

PorAS, a new approximate‐state Riemann solver, is proposed for hyperbolic systems of conservation laws with source terms and porosity. The use of porosity enables a simple representation of urban floodplains by taking into account the global reduction in the exchange sections and storage. The introduction of the porosity coefficient induces modified expressions for the fluxes and source terms in the continuity and momentum equations. The solution is considered to be made of rarefaction waves and is determined using the Riemann invariants. To allow a direct computation of the flux through the computational cells interfaces, the Riemann invariants are expressed as functions of the flux vector. The application of the PorAS solver to the shallow water equations is presented and several computational examples are given for a comparison with the HLLC solver. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Liao, Wei; Tsai, Her Mann

doi: 10.1002/fld.2070pmid: N/A

This paper deals with the use of the continuous adjoint equation for aerodynamic shape optimization of complex configurations with overset grids methods. While the use of overset grid eases the grid generation process, the non‐trivial task of ensuring communication between overlapping grids needs careful attention. This need is effectively addressed by using a practically useful technique known as the implicit hole cutting (IHC) method. The method depends on a simple cell selection process based on the criterion of cell size, and all grid points including interior points and fringe points are treated indiscriminately in the computation of the flow field. This paper demonstrates the simplicity of the IHC method for the adjoint equation. Similar to the flow solver, the adjoint equations are solved on conventional point‐matched and overlapped grids within a multi‐block framework. Parallel computing with message passing interface is also used to improve the overall efficiency of the optimization process. The method is successfully demonstrated in several two‐ and a three‐dimensional shape optimization cases for both external and internal flow problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gerlinger, P.; Nold, K.; Aigner, M.

doi: 10.1002/fld.2076pmid: N/A

The simulation of supersonic combustion requires finite‐rate chemistry because chemical and fluid mechanical time scales may be of the same order of magnitude. The size of the chosen reaction mechanism (number of species and reactions involved) has a strong influence on the computational time and thus should be chosen carefully. This paper investigates several hydrogen/air reaction mechanisms frequently used in supersonic combustion. It is shown that at low flight Mach numbers of a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet), some kinetic schemes can cause highly erroneous results. Moreover, extremely fine computational grids are required in the lift‐off region of supersonic flames to obtain grid‐independent solutions. The fully turbulent Mach 2 combustion experiment of Cheng et al. (Comb. Flame 1994; 99: 157–173) is chosen to investigate the influences of different reaction mechanisms, grid spacing, and inflow conditions (contaminations caused by precombustion). A detailed analysis of the experiment will be given and errors of previous simulations are identified. Thus, the paper provides important information for an accurate simulation of the Cheng et al. experiment. The importance of this experiment results from the fact that it is the only supersonic combustion test case where temperature and species fluctuations have been measured simultaneously. Such data are needed for the validation of probability density function methods. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sriram, V.; Sannasiraj, S. A.; Sundar, V.; Schlenkhoff, A.; Schlurmann, T.

doi: 10.1002/fld.2072pmid: N/A

Numerical simulation of nonlinear waves to reproduce the laboratory measurements has been a topic of great interest in the recent past. The results reported in the literature are mainly focused on qualitative comparison or on the relative errors between the numerical simulation and measurements in laboratory and hence lack in revealing the existence of phase shift in nonlinear wave simulation. In this paper, the simulation of nonlinear waves in mixed Eulerian and Lagrangian framework using finite element method (FEM) is investigated by applying two different velocity calculation methods viz, cubic spline and least squares (LS). The simulated wave surface elevation has been compared with the experimental measurements. The coherence analysis has been carried out using the wavelet transformation, which gives a better understanding between the numerical and the experimental results with respect to the time–frequency space, compared with the conventional Fourier transformation. It is observed that the application of cubic spline approach leads to a higher phase difference for steeper waves. The present study has shown that the phase difference exists at the higher modes rather than at the primary period. For waves with steepness (wave height/wave length) higher than 0.04, LS approach is found to be effective in capturing the higher‐order frequency components in the event of nonlinearity. In addition, the comparison of numerical simulations with that from PIV measurements for the tests with solitary waves is also reported. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.