An efficient second order in time scheme for approximating long time statistical properties of the two dimensional Navier-Stokes equations

We investigate the long tim behavior of the following efficient second order in time scheme for the 2D Navier-Stokes equation in a periodic box: \frac{3\omega^{n+1}-4\omega^n+\omega^{n-1}}{2k} + \nabla^\perp(2\psi^n-\psi^{n-1})\cdot\nabla(2\omega^n-\omega^{n-1}) - \nu\Delta\omega^{n+1} = f^{n+1}, \quad -\Delta \psi^n = \om^n. The scheme is a combination of a 2nd order in time backward-differentiation (BDF) and a special explicit Adams-Bashforth treatment of the advection term. Therefore only a linear constant coefficient Poisson type problem needs to be solved at each time step. We prove uniform in time bounds on this scheme in \dL2, \dH1 and $\dot{H}^2_{per}$ provided that the time-step is sufficiently small. These time uniform estimates further lead to the convergence of long time statistics (stationary statistical properties) of the scheme to that of the NSE itself at vanishing time-step. Fully discrete schemes with either Galerkin Fourier or collocation Fourier spectral method are also discussed

Approximating Stationary Statistical Properties

It is well-known that physical laws for large chaotic dynamical systems are revealed statistically. Many times these statistical properties of the system must be approximated numerically. the main contribution of this manuscript is to provide simple and natural criterions on numerical methods (temporal and spatial discretization) that are able to capture the stationary statistical properties of the underlying dissipative chaotic dynamical systems asymptotically. the result on temporal approximation is a recent finding of the author, and the result on spatial approximation is a new one. Applications to the infinite Prandtl number model for convection and the barotropic quasi-geostrophic model are also discussed. © Editorial Office of CAM and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009

The instanton method and its numerical implementation in fluid mechanics

A precise characterization of structures occurring in turbulent fluid flows at high Reynolds numbers is one of the last open problems of classical physics. In this review we discuss recent developments related to the application of instanton methods to turbulence. Instantons are saddle point configurations of the underlying path integrals. They are equivalent to minimizers of the related Freidlin-Wentzell action and known to be able to characterize rare events in such systems. While there is an impressive body of work concerning their analytical description, this review focuses on the question on how to compute these minimizers numerically. In a short introduction we present the relevant mathematical and physical background before we discuss the stochastic Burgers equation in detail. We present algorithms to compute instantons numerically by an efficient solution of the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations. A second focus is the discussion of a recently developed numerical filtering technique that allows to extract instantons from direct numerical simulations. In the following we present modifications of the algorithms to make them efficient when applied to two- or three-dimensional fluid dynamical problems. We illustrate these ideas using the two-dimensional Burgers equation and the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations

A matrix-free high-order discontinuous Galerkin compressible Navier-Stokes solver: A performance comparison of compressible and incompressible formulations for turbulent incompressible flows

Both compressible and incompressible Navier-Stokes solvers can be used and are used to solve incompressible turbulent flow problems. In the compressible case, the Mach number is then considered as a solver parameter that is set to a small value, $\mathrm{M}\approx 0.1$, in order to mimic incompressible flows. This strategy is widely used for high-order discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The present work raises the question regarding the computational efficiency of compressible DG solvers as compared to a genuinely incompressible formulation. Our contributions to the state-of-the-art are twofold: Firstly, we present a high-performance discontinuous Galerkin solver for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations based on a highly efficient matrix-free implementation that targets modern cache-based multicore architectures. The performance results presented in this work focus on the node-level performance and our results suggest that there is great potential for further performance improvements for current state-of-the-art discontinuous Galerkin implementations of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Secondly, this compressible Navier-Stokes solver is put into perspective by comparing it to an incompressible DG solver that uses the same matrix-free implementation. We discuss algorithmic differences between both solution strategies and present an in-depth numerical investigation of the performance. The considered benchmark test cases are the three-dimensional Taylor-Green vortex problem as a representative of transitional flows and the turbulent channel flow problem as a representative of wall-bounded turbulent flows