Comparisons Between Preconditioned BICGSTAB and a Multigrid Method for the Resolution of the Pressure Equation in a Navier-Stokes Solver

Abstract

We consider numerical methods for the incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations discretized by finite difference techniques on non-staggered grids in body-fitted coordinates. A segregated approach is used to solve the pressure-velocity coupling problem. We present detailed efficiency comparisons between iterative pressure linear solvers including Krylov subspace and multigrid methods. Three-dimensional numerical experiments carried out on scalar and vector machines and performed on different fluid flow problems show that a combination of multigrid and Krylov subspace methods is a robust and efficient pressure solver.