A PRESSURE‐CORRECTION METHOD FOR THE SOLUTION OF INCOMPRESSIBLE VISCOUS FLOWS ON UNSTRUCTURED GRIDS

Abstract

An unstructured grid, finite volume method is presented for the solution of two-dimensional viscous, incompressible flow. The method is based on the pressure-correction concept implemented on a semi-staggered grid. The computational procedure can handle cells of arbitrary shape, although solutions presented herein have been obtained only with meshes of triangular and quadrilateral cells. The discretization of the momentum equations is effected on dual cells surrounding the vertices of primary cells, while the pressure-correction equation applies to the primary-cell centroids and represents the conservation of mass across the primary cells. A special interpolation scheme s used to suppress pressure and velocity oscillations in cases where the semi-staggered arrangement does not ensure a sufficiently strong coupling between pressure and velocity to avoid such oscillations. Computational results presented for several viscous flows are shown to be in good agreement with analytical and experimental data reported in the open literature.