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The viscous finite volume lambda formulation is presented. The suggested technique is apt to compute viscous flows with heat fluxes. The inviscid terms are evaluated by means of the non‐conservative, very accurate upwind methodology, known as the finite volume lambda formulation. The diffusive terms, on the contrary, are approximated by a central scheme. Both methods are characterized by a nominal second order accuracy in space. Efficiency is enhanced by means of a multigrid technique which directly combines each grid level with each stage of an explicit multistage time integration technique. A laminar viscous flow about a NACA 0012 airfoil and a turbulent one about a RAE 2822 airfoil have been computed as well as the two‐ and three‐dimensional turbulent flows inside the Stanitz elbow. The computed numerical results are in very good agreement with well assessed published numerical or experimental results. The suggested multigrid technique allows significant work reductions for laminar as well as for turbulent flow computations.

Multiphase flow computations involve coupled momentum, mass and energy transfer between moving and irregularly shaped boundaries, large property jumps between materials, and computational stiffness. In this study, we focus on the immersed boundary technique, which is a combined Eulerian‐Lagrangian method, to investigate the performance improvement using the multigrid technique in the context of the projection method. The main emphasis is on the interplay between the multigrid computation and the effect of the density and viscosity ratios between phases. Two problems, namely, a rising bubble in a liquid medium and impact dynamics between a liquid drop and a solid surface are adopted. As the density ratio increases, the single grid computation becomes substantially more time‐consuming; with the present problems, an increase of factor 10 in density ratio results in approximately a three‐fold increase in CPU time. Overall, the multigrid technique speeds up the computation and furthermore, the impact of the density ratio on the CPU time required is substantially reduced. On the other hand, the impact of the viscosity ratio does not play a major role on the convergence rates.

This paper presents some linear adaptive non‐nested multigrid methods which are applied to linear elastic problems discretized with triangular and tetrahedral finite elements using unstructured and Delaunay mesh generators. The Zienkiewicz‐Zhu error estimator and a h‐refinement procedure are used to obtain the non‐nested meshes used by the multigrid methods. We solve problems with a specified percentage error in the energy norm using the optimal performance of multigrid methods.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an accurate and efficient technique for computing flow sensitivities by finite differences of perturbed flow fields. It relies on computing the perturbed flows on coarser grid levels only: to achieve the same fine-grid accuracy, the approximate value of the relative local truncation error between coarser and finest grids unperturbed flow fields, provided by a standard multigrid method, is added to the coarse grid equations. The gradient computation is introduced in a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) that takes advantage of the presented method to accelerate the gradient-based search. An application to a classical transonic airfoil design is reported.

Genetic optimization algorithm hybridized with classical gradient-based search techniques; usage of fast and accurate gradient computation technique.

The new variant of the prolongation operator with weighting terms based on the volume of grid cells improves the accuracy of the MAFD method for turbulent viscous flows. The hybrid GA is capable to efficiently handle and compensate for the error that, although very limited, is present in the multigrid-aided finite-difference (MAFD) gradient evaluation method.

The proposed new variants of HGA, while outperforming the simple genetic algorithm, still require tuning and validation to further improve performance.

Significant speedup of CFD-based optimization loops.

Introduction of new multigrid prolongation operator that improves the accuracy of MAFD method for turbulent viscous flows. First application of MAFD evaluation of flow sensitivities within a hybrid optimization framework.

Steady‐state two‐dimensional solutions to the full compressible Navier‐Stokes equations are computed for laminar convective motion of a gas in a square cavity with large horizontal temperature differences. No Boussinesq or low‐Mach number approximations of the Navier‐Stokes equations are used. Results for air are presented. The ideal‐gas law is used and viscosity is given by Sutherland’s law. An accurate low‐Mach number solver is developed. Here an explicit third‐order discretization for the convective part and a line‐implicit central discretization for the acoustic part and for the diffusive part are used. The semi‐implicit line method is formulated in multistage form. Multigrid is used as the acceleration technique. Owing to the implicit treatment of the acoustic and the diffusive terms, the stiffness otherwise caused by high aspect ratio cells is removed. Low Mach number stiffness is treated by a preconditioning technique. By a combination of the preconditioning technique, the semi‐implicit discretization and the multigrid formulation a convergence behaviour is obtained which is independent of grid size, grid aspect ratio, Mach number and Rayleigh number. Grid converged results are shown for a variety of Rayleigh numbers.

A heated rotating cavity with an axial throughflow of cooling air is used as a model for the flow in the cylindrical cavities between adjacent discs of a high‐pressure gas‐turbine compressor. In an engine the flow is expected to be turbulent, the limitations of this laminar study are fully realised but it is considered an essential step to understand the fundamental nature of the flow. The three‐dimensional, time‐dependent governing equations are solved using a code based on the finite volume technique and a multigrid algorithm. The computed flow structure shows that flow enters the cavity in one or more radial arms and then forms regions of cyclonic and anticyclonic circulation. This basic flow structure is consistent with existing experimental evidence obtained from flow visualization. The flow structure also undergoes cyclic changes with time. For example, a single radial arm, and pair of recirculation regions can commute to two radial arms and two pairs of recirculation regions and then revert back to one. The flow structure inside the cavity is found to be heavily influenced by the radial distribution of surface temperature imposed on the discs. As the radial location of the maximum disc temperature moves radially outward, this appears to increase the number of radial arms and pairs of recirculation regions (from one to three for the distributions considered here). If the peripheral shroud is also heated there appear to be many radial arms which exchange fluid with a strong cyclonic flow adjacent to the shroud. One surface temperature distribution is studied in detail and profiles of the relative tangential and radial velocities are presented. The disc heat transfer is also found to be influenced by the disc surface temperature distribution. It is also found that the computed Nusselt numbers are in reasonable accord over most of the disc surface with a correlation found from previous experimental measurements.

An optimized multigrid method (NSFLEX‐MG) for the NSFLEX‐code (Navier‐Stokes solver using characteristic flux extrapolation) of MBB (Messerschmitt Bolkow Blohm GmbH) is described. The method is based on a correction scheme and implicit relaxation procedures and is applied to two‐dimensional test cases. The principal feature of the flow solver is a Godunov‐type averaging procedure based on the eigenvalues analysis of the Euler equations by means of which the inviscid fluxes are evaluated at the finite volume faces. Viscous fluxes are centrally differenced at each cell face. The performance of NSFLEX‐MG is demonstrated for a large range of Mach numbers for compressible inviscid and viscous (laminar and turbulent) flows over a RAE‐2822 airfoil and over a NACA‐0012 airfoil.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce efficient methods for solving the 2D biharmonic equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions of second kind. This equation describes the deflection of loaded plate with boundary conditions of simply supported plate kind. Also it can be derived from the calculus of variations combined with the variational principle of minimum potential energy. Because of existing fourth derivatives in this equation, introducing high‐order accurate methods need to use artificial points. Also solving the resulted linear system of equations suffers from slow convergence when iterative methods are used. This paper aims to introduce efficient methods to overcome these problems.

The paper considers several compact finite difference approximations that are derived on a nine‐point compact stencil using the values of the solution and its second derivatives as the unknowns. In these approximations there is no need to define special formulas near the boundaries and boundary conditions can be incorporated with these techniques. Several iterative linear systems solvers such as Krylov subspace and multigrid methods and their combination (with suitable preconditioner) have been developed to compare the efficiency of each method and to design powerful solvers.

The paper finds that the combination of compact finite difference schemes with multigrid method and Krylov iteration methods preconditioned by multigrid have excellent results for the second biharmonic equation, and that Krylov iteration methods preconditioned by multigrid are the most efficient methods.

The paper is of value in presenting, via some tables and figures, some numerical experiments which resulted from applying new methods on several test problems, and making comparison with conventional methods.

A flux‐difference splitting based on the polynomial character of the flux vectors is applied to steady Euler equations, discretized with a vertex‐centred finite volume method. In first order accurate form, a discrete set of equations is obtained which is both conservative and positive. Due to the positivity, the set of equations can be solved by collective relaxation methods in multigrid form. A full multigrid method based on successive relaxation, full weighting, bilinear interpolation and W‐cycle is used. Second order accuracy is obtained by the Chakravarthy‐Osher flux‐extrapolation technique, using the Roe‐Chakravarthy minmod limiter. In second order form, direct relaxation of the discrete equations is no longer possible due to the loss of positivity. A defect‐correction is used in order to solve the second order system.

A multigrid algorithm, in conjunction with the finite element method, is proposed and applied to the Navier‐Stokes (N‐S) equations. A smoothing process is effected using a preconditioned conjugate gradient solution method and the technique is demonstrated by solving laminar flow problems.