Inertial Coupling Method for particles in an incompressible fluctuating fluid

We develop an inertial coupling method for modeling the dynamics of point-like 'blob' particles immersed in an incompressible fluid, generalizing previous work for compressible fluids. The coupling consistently includes excess (positive or negative) inertia of the particles relative to the displaced fluid, and accounts for thermal fluctuations in the fluid momentum equation. The coupling between the fluid and the blob is based on a no-slip constraint equating the particle velocity with the local average of the fluid velocity, and conserves momentum and energy. We demonstrate that the formulation obeys a fluctuation-dissipation balance, owing to the non-dissipative nature of the no-slip coupling. We develop a spatio-temporal discretization that preserves, as best as possible, these properties of the continuum formulation. In the spatial discretization, the local averaging and spreading operations are accomplished using compact kernels commonly used in immersed boundary methods. We find that the special properties of these kernels make the discrete blob a particle with surprisingly physically-consistent volume, mass, and hydrodynamic properties. We develop a second-order semi-implicit temporal integrator that maintains discrete fluctuation-dissipation balance, and is not limited in stability by viscosity. Furthermore, the temporal scheme requires only constant-coefficient Poisson and Helmholtz linear solvers, enabling a very efficient and simple FFT-based implementation on GPUs. We numerically investigate the performance of the method on several standard test problems...Comment: Contains a number of corrections and an additional Figure 7 (and associated discussion) relative to published versio

Supraconservative finite-volume methods for the Euler equations of subsonic compressible flow

It has been found advantageous for finite-volume discretizations of flow equations to possess additional (secondary) invariants, next to the (primary) invariants from the constituting conservation laws. The paper presents general (necessary and sufficient) requirements for a method to convectively preserve discrete kinetic energy. The key ingredient is a close discrete consistency between the convective term in the momentum equation and the terms in the other conservation equations (mass, internal energy). As examples, the Euler equations for subsonic (in)compressible flow are discretized with such supra-conservative finite-volume methods on structured as well as unstructured grids

Variational Time Integrators in Computational Solid Mechanics

This thesis develops the theory and implementation of variational integrators for computational solid mechanics problems, and to some extent, for fluid mechanics problems as well. Variational integrators for finite dimensional mechanical systems are succinctly reviewed, and used as the foundations for the extension to continuum systems. The latter is accomplished by way of a space-time formulation for Lagrangian continuum mechanics that unifies the derivation of the balance of linear momentum, energy and configurational forces, all of them as Euler-Lagrange equations of an extended Hamilton's principle. In this formulation, energy conservation and the path independence of the J- and L-integrals are conserved quantities emanating from Noether's theorem. Variational integrators for continuum mechanics are constructed by mimicking this variational structure, and a discrete Noether's theorem for rather general space-time discretizations is presented. Additionally, the algorithms are automatically (multi)symplectic, and the (multi)symplectic form is uniquely defined by the theory. For instance, in nonlinear elastodynamics the algorithms exactly preserve linear and angular momenta, whenever the continuous system does. A class of variational algorithms is constructed, termed asynchronous variational integrators (AVI), which permit the selection of independent time steps in each element of a finite element mesh, and the local time steps need not bear an integral relation to each other. The conservation properties of both synchronous and asynchronous variational integrators are discussed in detail. In particular, AVI are found to nearly conserve energy both locally and globally, a distinguishing feature of variational integrators. The possibility of adapting the elemental time step to exactly satisfy the local energy balance equation, obtained from the extended variational principle, is analyzed. The AVI are also extended to include dissipative systems. The excellent accuracy, conservation and convergence characteristics of AVI are demonstrated via selected numerical examples, both for conservative and dissipative systems. In these tests AVI are found to result in substantial speedups, at equal accuracy, relative to explicit Newmark. In elastostatics, the variational structure leads to the formulation of discrete path-independent integrals and a characterization of the configurational forces acting in discrete systems. A notable example is a discrete, path-independent J-integral at the tip of a crack in a finite element mesh.</p

Staggered Schemes for Fluctuating Hydrodynamics

We develop numerical schemes for solving the isothermal compressible and incompressible equations of fluctuating hydrodynamics on a grid with staggered momenta. We develop a second-order accurate spatial discretization of the diffusive, advective and stochastic fluxes that satisfies a discrete fluctuation-dissipation balance, and construct temporal discretizations that are at least second-order accurate in time deterministically and in a weak sense. Specifically, the methods reproduce the correct equilibrium covariances of the fluctuating fields to third (compressible) and second (incompressible) order in the time step, as we verify numerically. We apply our techniques to model recent experimental measurements of giant fluctuations in diffusively mixing fluids in a micro-gravity environment [A. Vailati et. al., Nature Communications 2:290, 2011]. Numerical results for the static spectrum of non-equilibrium concentration fluctuations are in excellent agreement between the compressible and incompressible simulations, and in good agreement with experimental results for all measured wavenumbers.Comment: Submitted. See also arXiv:0906.242

A novel structure preserving semi-implicit finite volume method for viscous and resistive magnetohydrodynamics

In this work we introduce a novel semi-implicit structure-preserving finite-volume/finite-difference scheme for the viscous and resistive equations of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) based on an appropriate 3-split of the governing PDE system, which is decomposed into a first convective subsystem, a second subsystem involving the coupling of the velocity field with the magnetic field and a third subsystem involving the pressure-velocity coupling. The nonlinear convective terms are discretized explicitly, while the remaining two subsystems accounting for the Alfven waves and the magneto-acoustic waves are treated implicitly. The final algorithm is at least formally constrained only by a mild CFL stability condition depending on the velocity field of the pure hydrodynamic convection. To preserve the divergence-free constraint of the magnetic field exactly at the discrete level, a proper set of overlapping dual meshes is employed. The resulting linear algebraic systems are shown to be symmetric and therefore can be solved by means of an efficient standard matrix-free conjugate gradient algorithm. One of the peculiarities of the presented algorithm is that the magnetic field is defined on the edges of the main grid, while the electric field is on the faces. The final scheme can be regarded as a novel shock-capturing, conservative and structure preserving semi-implicit scheme for the nonlinear viscous and resistive MHD equations. Several numerical tests are presented to show the main features of our novel solver: linear-stability in the sense of Lyapunov is verified at a prescribed constant equilibrium solution; a 2nd-order of convergence is numerically estimated; shock-capturing capabilities are proven against a standard set of stringent MHD shock-problems; accuracy and robustness are verified against a nontrivial set of 2- and 3-dimensional MHD problems.Comment: 44 pages, 22 figures, 2 table