Abstract

A numerical approximation for the one-dimensional Burgers equation is proposed by means of the orthogonal subgrid scales–variational multiscale (OSGS-VMS) method. We evaluate the role of the variational subscales in describing the Burgers “turbulence” phenomena. Particularly, we seek to clarify the interaction between the subscales and the resolved scales when the former are defined to be orthogonal to the finite-dimensional space. Direct numerical simulation is used to evaluate the resulting OSGS-VMS energy spectra. The comparison against a large eddy simulation model is presented for numerical discretizations in which the grid is not capable of solving the small scales. An accurate approximation to the phenomena of turbulence is obtained with the addition of the purely dissipative numerical terms given by the OSGS-VMS method without any modification of the continuous problem

Abstract

In this paper we consider several aspects related to the application of the pseudo‐concentration techniques to the simulation of mould filling processes. We discuss, in particular, the smoothing of the front when finite elements with interior nodes are employed and the evacuation of air through the introduction of temporary free wall nodes. The basic numerical techniques to solve the incompressible Navier—Stokes equations are also briefly described. The main features of the numerical model are the use of div‐stable velocity—pressure interpolations with discontinuous pressures, the elimination of the pressure via an iterative penalty formulation, the use of the SUPG approach to deal with convection‐dominated problems and the temporal integration using the generalized trapezoidal rule. At the end of the paper we present some numerical results obtained for a two‐dimensional test problem showing the ability of the method to capture complicated flow patterns.

Abstract

In this work we study the performance of some variational multiscale models (VMS) in the large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows. We consider VMS models obtained by different subgrid scale approximations which include either static or dynamic subscales, linear or nonlinear multiscale splitting, and different choices of the subscale space. After a brief review of these models, we discuss some implementation aspects particularly relevant to the simulation of turbulent flows, namely the use of a skew symmetric form of the convective term and the computation of projections when orthogonal subscales are used. We analyze the energy conservation (and numerical dissipation) of the alternative VMS formulations, which is numerically evaluated. In the numerical study, we have considered three well known problems: the decay of homogeneous isotropic turbulence, the Taylor–Green vortex problem and the turbulent flow in a channel. We compare the results obtained using different VMS models, paying special attention to the effect of using orthogonal subscale spaces. The VMS results are also compared against classical LES scheme based on filtering and the dynamic Smagorinsky closure. Altogether, our results show the tremendous potential of VMS for the numerical simulation of turbulence. Further, we study the sensitivity of VMS to the algorithmic constants and analyze the behavior in the small time step limit. We have also carried out a computational cost comparison of the different formulations. Out of these experiments, we can state that the numerical results obtained with the different VMS formulations (as far as they converge) are quite similar. However, some choices are prone to instabilities and the results obtained in terms of computational cost are certainly different. The dynamic orthogonal subscales model turns out to be best in terms of efficiency and robustness.

Abstract

In this work we propose a variational multiscale finite element approximation of thermally coupled low speed flows. The physical model is described by the low Mach number equations, which are obtained as a limit of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations in the small Mach number regime. In contrast to the commonly used Boussinesq approximation, this model permits to take volumetric deformation into account. Although the former is more general than the latter, both systems have similar mathematical structure and their numerical approximation can suffer from the same type of instabilities. We propose a stabilized finite element approximation based on the variational multiscale method, in which a decomposition of the approximating space into a coarse scale resolvable part and a fine scale subgrid part is performed. Modeling the subscale and taking its effect on the coarse scale problem into account results in a stable formulation. The quality of the final approximation (accuracy, efficiency) depends on the particular model. The distinctive features of our approach are to consider the subscales as transient and to keep the scale splitting in all the nonlinear terms. The first ingredient permits to obtain an improved time discretization scheme (higher accuracy, better stability, no restrictions on the time step size). The second ingredient permits to prove global conservation properties. It also allows us to approach the problem of dealing with thermal turbulence from a strictly numerical point of view. Numerical tests show that nonlinear and dynamic subscales give more accurate solutions than classical stabilized methods.