Evaluating the stability of numerical schemes for fluid solvers in game technology

A variety of numerical techniques have been explored to solve the shallow water equations in real-time water simulations for computer graphics applications. However, determining the stability of a numerical algorithm is a complex and involved task when a coupled set of nonlinear partial differential equations need to be solved. This paper proposes a novel and simple technique to compare the relative empirical stability of finite difference (or any grid-based scheme) algorithms by solving the inviscid Burgers’ equation to analyse their respective breaking times. To exemplify the method to evaluate numerical stability, a range of finite difference schemes is considered. The technique is effective at evaluating the relative stability of the considered schemes and demonstrates that the conservative schemes have superior stability

The Simple Finite Volume Lax-Wendroff Weighted Essentially Nonoscillatory Schemes for Shallow Water Equations with Bottom Topography

A Lax-Wendroff-type procedure with the high order finite volume simple weighted essentially nonoscillatory (SWENO) scheme is proposed to simulate the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) shallow water equations with topography influence in source terms. The system of shallow water equations is discretized using the simple WENO scheme in space and Lax-Wendroff scheme in time. The idea of Lax-Wendroff time discretization can avoid part of characteristic decomposition and calculation of nonlinear weights. The type of simple WENO was first developed by Zhu and Qiu in 2016, which is more simple than classical WENO fashion. In order to maintain good, high resolution and nonoscillation for both continuous and discontinuous flow and suit problems with discontinuous bottom topography, we use the same idea of SWENO reconstruction for flux to treat the source term in prebalanced shallow water equations. A range of numerical examples are performed; as a result, comparing with classical WENO reconstruction and Runge-Kutta time discretization, the simple Lax-Wendroff WENO schemes can obtain the same accuracy order and escape nonphysical oscillation adjacent strong shock, while bringing less absolute truncation error and costing less CPU time for most problems. These conclusions agree with that of finite difference Lax-Wendroff WENO scheme for shallow water equations, while finite volume method has more flexible mesh structure compared to finite difference method

A Space-time Smooth Artificial Viscosity Method For Nonlinear Conservation Laws

We introduce a new methodology for adding localized, space-time smooth, artificial viscosity to nonlinear systems of conservation laws which propagate shock waves, rarefactions, and contact discontinuities, which we call the $C$-method. We shall focus our attention on the compressible Euler equations in one space dimension. The novel feature of our approach involves the coupling of a linear scalar reaction-diffusion equation to our system of conservation laws, whose solution $C(x,t)$ is the coefficient to an additional (and artificial) term added to the flux, which determines the location, localization, and strength of the artificial viscosity. Near shock discontinuities, $C(x,t)$ is large and localized, and transitions smoothly in space-time to zero away from discontinuities. Our approach is a provably convergent, spacetime-regularized variant of the original idea of Richtmeyer and Von Neumann, and is provided at the level of the PDE, thus allowing a host of numerical discretization schemes to be employed. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the $C$-method with three different numerical implementations and apply these to a collection of classical problems: the Sod shock-tube, the Osher-Shu shock-tube, the Woodward-Colella blast wave and the Leblanc shock-tube. First, we use a classical continuous finite-element implementation using second-order discretization in both space and time, FEM-C. Second, we use a simplified WENO scheme within our $C$-method framework, WENO-C. Third, we use WENO with the Lax-Friedrichs flux together with the $C$-equation, and call this WENO-LF-C. All three schemes yield higher-order discretization strategies, which provide sharp shock resolution with minimal overshoot and noise, and compare well with higher-order WENO schemes that employ approximate Riemann solvers, outperforming them for the difficult Leblanc shock tube experiment.Comment: 34 pages, 27 figure