Implementation of the GRP scheme for computing radially symmetric compressible fluid flows

Abstract

The study of radially symmetric compressible fluid flows is interesting both from the theoretical and numerical points of view. Spherical explosion and implosion in air, water and other media are well-known problems in application. Typical difficulties lie in the treatment of singularity in the geometrical source and the imposition of boundary conditions at the symmetric center, in addition to the resolution of classical discontinuities (shocks and contact discontinuities). In the present paper we present the implementation of direct generalized Riemann problem (GRP) scheme to resolve this issue. The scheme is obtained directly by the time integration of the fluid flows. Our new contribution is to show rigorously that the singularity is removable and derive the updating formulae for mass and energy at the center. Together with the vanishing of the momentum, we obtain new numerical boundary conditions at the center, which are then incorporated into the GRP scheme. The main ingredient is the passage from the Cartesian coordinates to the radially symmetric coordinates.