Conservation Properties of Unstructured Finite-Volume Mesh Schemes for the Navier-Stokes Equations

• Published in: Numerical heat transfer. Part B, Fundamentals Vol. 65; no. 1; pp. 53 - 79
• Main Authors: Jofre, Lluís, Lehmkuhl, Oriol, Ventosa, Jordi, Trias, F. Xavier, Oliva, Assensi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Taylor & Francis Group 02-01-2014; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Accuracy; Computational fluid dynamics; Conservation; Fluid dynamics; Navier-Stokes equations; Turbulent flow
• ISSN: 1040-7790; 1521-0626
• DOI: 10.1080/10407790.2013.836335

The Navier-Stokes equations describe fluid flow by conserving mass and momentum. There are two main mesh discretizations for the computation of these equations, the collocated and staggered schemes. Collocated schemes locate the velocity field at the same grid points as the pressure one, while staggered discretizations locate variables at different points within the mesh. One of the most important characteristic of the discretization schemes, aside from accuracy, is their capacity to discretely conserve kinetic energy, specially when solving turbulent flow. Hence, this work analyzes the accuracy and conservation properties of two particular collocated and staggered schemes by solving various problems.