A High-Order Radial Basis Function (RBF) Leray Projection Method for the Solution of the Incompressible Unsteady Stokes Equations

A new projection method based on radial basis functions (RBFs) is presented for discretizing the incompressible unsteady Stokes equations in irregular geometries. The novelty of the method comes from the application of a new technique for computing the Leray-Helmholtz projection of a vector field using generalized interpolation with divergence-free and curl-free RBFs. Unlike traditional projection methods, this new method enables matching both tangential and normal components of divergence-free vector fields on the domain boundary. This allows incompressibility of the velocity field to be enforced without any time-splitting or pressure boundary conditions. Spatial derivatives are approximated using collocation with global RBFs so that the method only requires samples of the field at (possibly scattered) nodes over the domain. Numerical results are presented demonstrating high-order convergence in both space (between 5th and 6th order) and time (up to 4th order) for some model problems in two dimensional irregular geometries.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figure

Kernel-based stochastic collocation for the random two-phase Navier-Stokes equations

In this work, we apply stochastic collocation methods with radial kernel basis functions for an uncertainty quantification of the random incompressible two-phase Navier-Stokes equations. Our approach is non-intrusive and we use the existing fluid dynamics solver NaSt3DGPF to solve the incompressible two-phase Navier-Stokes equation for each given realization. We are able to empirically show that the resulting kernel-based stochastic collocation is highly competitive in this setting and even outperforms some other standard methods

Application of Meshless Methods for Thermal Analysis

Many numerical and analytical schemes exist for solving heat transfer problems. The meshless method is a particularly attractive method that is receiving attention in the engineering and scientific modeling communities. The meshless method is simple, accurate, and requires no polygonalisation. In this study, we focus on the application of meshless methods using radial basis functions (RBFs) — which are simple to implement — for thermal problems. Radial basis functions are the natural generalization of univariate polynomial splines to a multivariate setting that work for arbitrary geometry with high dimensions. RBF functions depend only on the distance from some center point. Using distance functions, RBFs can be easily implemented to model heat transfer in arbitrary dimension or symmetry

The automatic solution of partial differential equations using a global spectral method

A spectral method for solving linear partial differential equations (PDEs) with variable coefficients and general boundary conditions defined on rectangular domains is described, based on separable representations of partial differential operators and the one-dimensional ultraspherical spectral method. If a partial differential operator is of splitting rank $2$, such as the operator associated with Poisson or Helmholtz, the corresponding PDE is solved via a generalized Sylvester matrix equation, and a bivariate polynomial approximation of the solution of degree $(n_x,n_y)$ is computed in $\mathcal{O}((n_x n_y)^{3/2})$ operations. Partial differential operators of splitting rank $\geq 3$ are solved via a linear system involving a block-banded matrix in $\mathcal{O}(\min(n_x^{3} n_y,n_x n_y^{3}))$ operations. Numerical examples demonstrate the applicability of our 2D spectral method to a broad class of PDEs, which includes elliptic and dispersive time-evolution equations. The resulting PDE solver is written in MATLAB and is publicly available as part of CHEBFUN. It can resolve solutions requiring over a million degrees of freedom in under $60$ seconds. An experimental implementation in the Julia language can currently perform the same solve in $10$ seconds.Comment: 22 page