Numerical Solution of the

Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations

Ae243 Biofluid Mechanics

Term Project
4 June 2004

Georgios Matheou
The Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations

• Why Care?
– Life can not exist without fluids.
– All biological flows are incompressible, i.e. no bird or fish flies/swims faster
than M=0.3.
– Internal flows are mostly laminar (makes things easier).
• In spite of their simplicity the Navier-Stokes describe flows at very low
Reynolds numbers (creeping flows) up to complicated turbulent flows at
large Reynolds numbers.
• The equations:
– Continuity u  0
u
– Momentum

t

  u  u  p     u  u T 

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The Role of Pressure

• Taking the divergence of the Navier-Stokes we get

D 2 1 2 ui u j
     u    p 
 Dt   x j xi

• The solution with initial and boundary condition     u  0

is Δ=0 if, and only if, the right hand side is zero everywhere. Thus the pressure
satisfies the Poisson equation:
ui u j
 p  
2

x j xi
• The satisfaction of this Poisson equation is a necessary and sufficient condition
for a divergence free velocity field to remain divergence free. The role of
pressure is to enforce continuity, it is more a mathematical variable than a
physical one.
• This observation leads to a strategy of solving the Navier-Stokes equations that
imposes continuity by inverting a Poisson equation for a pressure-like variable.

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The Problem – Shear Driven Cavity

• Some insects (dragonfly) have wings with well

defined cross-sectional corrugation (Kesel, 2000).
• Vortices develop in the valleys of the profile.
• The flow in the cavity is driven by shear.
• For a square cavity there is only one parameter that
characterizes the flow, the Reynolds number:

U lid L
Re 


Flow visualization at
Re=0.01. (Taneda,
1979)

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Staggered Grid

• Staggered Grid (Harlow and

Welsh, 1965)
– Pressure is defined at the cell
centers
– Velocities are normal to the cell
faces
• Attractive mathematical and
physical properties
– Do not display spurious pressure
oscillations
– Low memory requirements
– Computationally efficient
– Conservation properties (mass,
momentum, kinetic energy,
vorticity)

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Numerical Method – Exact Fractional Step Method (Chang, 2002)

• Goal: satisfy discrete incompressibility and eliminate the pressure equation

• Incompressibility constraint:
 u  n̂dS   u Si  0
CV faces

• Define volume fluxes as Ui=u Si and define the vector q that has the Ui’s in some
ordering. Then the above equation in matrix form is:
Dq  0,
 1 0 0 1 1
where : D 
  1 1 1 0 0
• We can construct a matrix C which is the null space of D, that is D C=0
 1 0 1 0 
 1 1 0 0 
 
C   0 1 1 0 
 
 0 0 1  1
 1 0 0 1 

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Numerical Method – Exact Fractional Step Method (Chang, 2002) (cont.)

• C is a discrete curl operator that allows us to define a discrete streamfunction s at

the vertices of the mesh:
q  Cs
• A discrete gradient operator G can be defined as the transpose of D:

G  DT

• If we have a scalar quantity (like pressure), the discretized vector of which is φ,

then G

is the discrete version of p

• Then:
CTG  CT DT  (DC)T   0
which reproduces the continuous identity:   p  0

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Finite Volume Formulation

• x-momentum equation
u 1  u u 
 t i, j 
dV  uu  ˆ
n dS i, j   x i, j Re  x x y ny dSi, j
pn dS   n 

• Evaluate all integrals with the second order accurate

midpoint rule (uniform grid spacing in x and y):

1   u 
x y
dui , j
dt
 2 2
  2 2 2 2

 y ui2 1 , j  ui2 1 , j  x ui , j  1 vi  1 , j 1  ui , j  1 vi  1 , j  y  pi , j  pi 1, j  
  u

 
y 
u 


Re   x i  12 , j x i  12 , j 
 y 


u 
y i , j  1 y i , j  1 

  2 2  
• In operator form:
1 (u ) dui , j
Li , j ui , j  H i(,uj)   i  1 pi , j 
dt 2
Re
• Changing variables from velocity u to volume fluxes U, normalizing in order to
clear the denominator of the pressure gradient, the two momentum equations for the
vector of fluxes q become:
dq
M  G  Re1
Lq  r  b
dt

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Elimination of Pressure and Time Marching

• Substituting q=Cs and premultipling the system by CT the pressure is

eliminated and the momentum equations are reduced to a single scalar
equation for s:

ds 1 T
CTMC  Re C LCs  CT (r  b)
dt

• Using explicit Adams-Bashforth 2 for the convection terms and implicit

trapezoidal for the viscous we get the discrete system of equations:

 t  n1  t  n 3 1 
CT  M  L Cs  CT  M  L Cs  t CT  r n  r n1  b 
 2 Re   2 Re  2 2 

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Verification – Re=100

•Comparison of steady state solution with data from Ghia

et al (1982).
•Simulation at Re=100 with grid resolution of 100×100.
•Ghia resolution is 128×128.
•Computed main vortex center at x=0.6188 and y=0.7396
•Ghia prediction at x=0.6172 and y=0.7344

Velocity along the midlines. Lines are

the current computation, circles are data
from Ghia.
Streamlines of steady state solution at Re=100

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Re=1000 – Grid: 200² - Velocity Field

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Vorticity – Re=1000

t=1.00 t=2.25

t=7.25 t=14.75

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References

• W. Chang, F. Giraldo, and B. Perot. Analysis of an exact fractional step

method. J. Comput. Phys., 180:183-199, 2002.
• J. H. Ferziger and M. Peric. Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics.
Springer, 2002.
• U. Ghia, K. N. Ghia, and C. T. Shin. High-Re solutions for incompressible
flow using the Navier-Stokes equations and a multigrid method. J. Comput.
Phys., 8:387, 1982.
• F. H. Harlow and J. E. Welch. Numerical calculations of time dependent
viscous incompressible flow of fluid with a free surface. Phys. Fluids,
8(12):2182, 1965.
• A. B. Kesel. Aerodynamic characteristics of dragonfly wing sections
compared with technical aerofoils. J. Exp. Biol., 203:3125, 2000.
• S. B. Pope. Turbulent flows. Cambridge, 2000.
• S. Taneda. Visualization of separating flows. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn, 46:1935,
1979.

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