A DECOUPLING NUMERICAL-METHOD FOR FLUID-FLOW

A first-order non-conforming numerical methodology, Separation method, for fluid flow problems with a 3-point exponential interpolation scheme has been developed. The flow problem is decoupled into multiple one-dimensional subproblems and assembled to form the solutions. A fully staggered grid and a conservational domain centred at the node of interest make the decoupling scheme first-order-acccurate. The discretization of each one-dimensional subproblem is based on a 3-point interpolation function and a conservational domain centred at the node of interest. The proposed scheme gives a guaranteed first-order accuracy. It is shown that the traditional upwind (or exponentially weighted upstream) scheme is less than first-order-accurate. The pressure is decoupled from the velocity field using the pressure correction method of SIMPLE. Thomas algorithm (tri-diagonal solver) is used to solve the algebraic equations iteratively. The numerical advantage of the proposed scheme is tested for laminar fluid flows in a torus and in a square-driven cavity. The convergence rates are compared with the traditional schemes for the square-driven cavity problem. Good behaviour of the proposed scheme is ascertained.