A Comparative Study of High-Order, Quasi-Conservative, Semi-Lagrangian, and Eulerian Advection Schemes

Abstract

Abstract Quasi-conservative high-order semi-Lagrangian advection schemes are compared with several positive-definite Eulerian schemes in flux form, including Bott’s scheme. In this study, the conventional equipartition method is modified as a posterior iterative mass correction algorithm to restore conservation for semi-Lagrangian transport. The performance comparisons between semi-Lagrangian and Eulerian schemes are evidence that the fifth-order (seventh-order) Bott’s area-preserving algorithm without flux limitation is practically equivalent to the quintic (seventh-order) semi-Lagrangian scheme in the rotational flow, with the maximum directional Courant number smaller than 0.5. For positive-definite advection, Bott’s algorithm with the flux limitation obtains slightly better (worse) amplitude preservation in the rotational flow tests compared to semi-Lagrangian schemes of same order with (without) the mass correction algorithm. In the nonlinear deformational flow where the maximum directional Courant n...