Abstract

We examine the use of natural boundary conditions and conditions of the Sommerfeld type for finite element simulations of convective transport in viscous incompressible flows. We show that natural boundary conditions are superior in the sense that they always provide a correct boundary condition, as opposed to the Sommerfeld‐type conditions, which can lead to a singular formulation and a great loss of accuracy. For the Navier–Stokes equations, the natural boundary conditions must be combined with a simple method to eliminate perturbations on the pressure at the open boundary, which is the source of most errors.

Abstract

We introduce in this paper a variational subgrid scale model for the solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. With respect to classical multiscale-based stabilisation techniques, we retain the subgrid scale effects in the convective term and integrate the subgrid scale equation in time. The method is applied to the Navier-Stokes equations in an accelerating frame of reference and with Dirichlet (essential), Neumann (natural) and mixed boundary conditions. The concrete objective of the paper is to test a numerical algorithm for solving the non-linear subgrid scale equation and the introduction of the subgrid scale into the grid scale equation. The performance of the technique is demonstrated through the solution of two numerical examples: one to test the tracking of the subgrid scale in the convection term and the other to investigate the effects of considering the subgrid scale transient.