Code verification of boundary conditions for compressible and incompressible computational fluid dynamics codes

Abstract

To establish confidence in the code, a rigorous assessment of boundary condition implementation is necessary. In this work, techniques are presented for performing code verification of boundary conditions commonly used in compressible and incompressible Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. Using a compressible CFD code, this study assesses the subsonic inflow (isentropic and fixed-mass), subsonic outflow, supersonic outflow, no-slip wall (adiabatic and isothermal), and inviscid slip-wall. A novel approach is introduced to determine manufactured solutions for boundary condition verification when the velocity-field is constrained to be divergence-free during the simulation in an incompressible CFD code. The use of simplified curved surfaces is proposed for easier generation of manufactured solutions during the verification of certain boundary conditions involving many constraints. To perform rigorous code verification, general grids with mixed cell types at the verified boundary are used. It is found that the use of planar boundaries or only hexahedral cells at the verified boundary can mask sources of errors in the boundary condition implementation.