An implicit ghost-cell immersed boundary method for simulations of moving body problems with control of spurious force oscillations

A fully-implicit ghost-cell immersed boundary method for simulations of flow over complex moving bodies on a Cartesian grid is presented. The present immersed boundary method is highly capable of controlling the generation of spurious force oscillations on the surface of a moving body, thereby producing an accurate and stable solution. Spurious force oscillations on the surface of an immersed moving body are reduced by alleviating spatial and temporal discontinuities in the pressure and velocity fields across non-grid conforming immersed boundaries. A sharp-interface ghost-cell immersed-boundary method is coupled with a mass source and sink algorithm to improve the conservation of mass across non-grid conforming immersed boundaries. To facilitate the control for the temporal discontinuity in the flow field due to a motion of an immersed body, a fully-implicit time-integration scheme is employed. A novel backward time-integration scheme is developed to effectively treat multiple layers of fresh cells generated by a motion of an immersed body at a high CFL number condition. The present backward time-integration scheme allows to impose more accurate and stable velocity vectors on fresh cells than those interpolated. The effectiveness of the present fully-implicit ghost-cell immersed boundary method coupled with a mass source and sink algorithm for reducing spurious force oscillations during simulations of moving body problems is demonstrated in a number of test cases. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.