Numerical study of two-dimensional laminar flows using contravariant velocity fluxes on collocated grids in general coordinates.

A numerical methodology has been developed to solve steady laminar flows in two-dimensional domains of arbitrary shape using body-fitted coordinates. The finite volume procedure was used to discretize the governing equations. Contravariant velocity fluxes were used as the dependent variables in the momentum equations, which retain a strongly conservative form in general curvilinear coordinates. Since non-staggered grids were used, a momentum interpolation was employed to suppress the pressure oscillation. A hybrid differencing scheme was employed to treat the convection-diffusion terms in the momentum equations. The capability of this method to predict flow characteristics in complex geometries was demonstrated by solving four typical fluid flow problems. They are laminar flows between two concentric cylinders, laminar flows through a channel with gradual expansion, laminar flows inside a tube with a constriction and separated flows in a lid-driven cavity. The SIMPLEC algorithm was adopted in the first three problems while both SIMPLE and SIMPLEC algorithms were adopted in the last problem. Comparisons with exact solutions, bench-mark solutions, experimental data and results from other researchers were performed. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 37-02, page: 0684. Adviser: Chao Zhang. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1996