Book Description

Anisotropies occur naturally in CFD where the simulation of small scale physical phenomena, such as boundary layers at high Reynolds numbers, causes the grid to be highly stretched leading to a slow down in convergence of multigrid methods. Several approaches aimed at making multigrid a robust solver have been proposed and analyzed in literature using the scalar diffusion equation. However, they have been rarely applied to solving more complicated models, like the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. This paper contains the first published numerical results of the behavior of two popular robust multigrid approaches (alternating-plane smoothers combined with standard coarsening and plane implicit smoothers combined with semi-coarsening) for solving the 3-D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the simulation of the driven cavity and a boundary layer over a flat plate on a stretched grid. The discrete operator is obtained using a staggered-grid arrangement of variables with a finite volume technique and second-order accuracy is achieved using defect correction within the multigrid cycle. Grid size, grid stretching and Reynolds number are the factors considered in evaluating the robustness of the multigrid methods. Both approaches yield large increases in convergence rates over cell-implicit smoothers on stretched grids. The combination of plane implicit smoothers and semi-coarsening was found to be fully robust in the fiat plate simulation up to Reynolds numbers 10(exp 6) and the best alternative in the driven cavity simulation for Reynolds numbers above 10(exp 3). The alternating-plane approach exhibits a better behavior for lower Reynolds numbers (below to 10(exp 3) in the driven cavity simulation. A parallel variant of the smoother, tri-plane ordering, presents a good trade-off between convergence and parallel properties.