Failsafe flux limiting and constrained data projections for equations of gas dynamics

A new approach to flux limiting for systems of conservation laws is presented. The Galerkin finite element discretization/L-2 projection is equipped with a failsafe mechanism that prevents the birth and growth of spurious local extrema. Within the framework of a synchronized flux-corrected transport (FCT) algorithm, the velocity and pressure fields are constrained using node-by-node transformations from the conservative to the primitive variables. An additional correction step is included to ensure that all the quantities of interest (density, velocity, pressure) are bounded by the physically admissible low-order values. The result is a conservative and bounded scheme with low numerical diffusion. The new failsafe FCT limiter is integrated into a high-resolution finite element scheme for the Euler equations of gas dynamics. Also, bounded L-2 projection operators for conservative interpolation/initialization are designed. The performance of the proposed limiting strategy and the need for a posteriori control of flux-corrected solutions are illustrated by numerical examples. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.