High order direct Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian schemes on moving Voronoi meshes with topology changes

We present a new family of very high order accurate direct Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) Finite Volume (FV) and Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes for the solution of nonlinear hyperbolic PDE systems on moving 2D Voronoi meshes that are regenerated at each time step and which explicitly allow topology changes in time. The Voronoi tessellations are obtained from a set of generator points that move with the local fluid velocity. We employ an AREPO-type approach, which rapidly rebuilds a new high quality mesh rearranging the element shapes and neighbors in order to guarantee a robust mesh evolution even for vortex flows and very long simulation times. The old and new Voronoi elements associated to the same generator are connected to construct closed space--time control volumes, whose bottom and top faces may be polygons with a different number of sides. We also incorporate degenerate space--time sliver elements, needed to fill the space--time holes that arise because of topology changes. The final ALE FV-DG scheme is obtained by a redesign of the fully discrete direct ALE schemes of Boscheri and Dumbser, extended here to moving Voronoi meshes and space--time sliver elements. Our new numerical scheme is based on the integration over arbitrary shaped closed space--time control volumes combined with a fully-discrete space--time conservation formulation of the governing PDE system. In this way the discrete solution is conservative and satisfies the GCL by construction. Numerical convergence studies as well as a large set of benchmarks for hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method. Our numerical results clearly show that the new combination of very high order schemes with regenerated meshes with topology changes lead to substantial improvements compared to direct ALE methods on conforming meshes

The VOLNA code for the numerical modelling of tsunami waves: generation, propagation and inundation

A novel tool for tsunami wave modelling is presented. This tool has the potential of being used for operational purposes: indeed, the numerical code \VOLNA is able to handle the complete life-cycle of a tsunami (generation, propagation and run-up along the coast). The algorithm works on unstructured triangular meshes and thus can be run in arbitrary complex domains. This paper contains the detailed description of the finite volume scheme implemented in the code. The numerical treatment of the wet/dry transition is explained. This point is crucial for accurate run-up/run-down computations. Most existing tsunami codes use semi-empirical techniques at this stage, which are not always sufficient for tsunami hazard mitigation. Indeed the decision to evacuate inhabitants is based on inundation maps which are produced with this type of numerical tools. We present several realistic test cases that partially validate our algorithm. Comparisons with analytical solutions and experimental data are performed. Finally the main conclusions are outlined and the perspectives for future research presented.Comment: 47 pages, 27 figures. Other author's papers can be downloaded at http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~dutykh

Finite volume schemes and Lax-Wendroff consistency

We present a (partial) historical summary of the mathematical analysis of finite differences and finite volumes methods, paying a special attention to the Lax-Richtmyer and Lax-Wendroff theorems. We then state a Lax-Wendroff consistency result for convection operators on staggered grids (often used in fluid flow simulations), which illustrates a recent generalization of the flux consistency notion designed to cope with general discrete functions

A general framework to construct schemes satisfying additional conservation relations. Application to entropy conservative and entropy dissipative schemes

We are interested in the approximation of a steady hyperbolic problem. In some cases, the solution can satisfy an additional conservation relation, at least when it is smooth. This is the case of an entropy. In this paper, we show, starting from the discretisation of the original PDE, how to construct a scheme that is consistent with the original PDE and the additional conservation relation. Since one interesting example is given by the systems endowed by an entropy, we provide one explicit solution, and show that the accuracy of the new scheme is at most degraded by one order. In the case of a discontinuous Galerkin scheme and a Residual distribution scheme, we show how not to degrade the accuracy. This improves the recent results obtained in [1, 2, 3, 4] in the sense that no particular constraints are set on quadrature formula and that a priori maximum accuracy can still be achieved. We study the behavior of the method on a non linear scalar problem. However, the method is not restricted to scalar problems