Implicit finite element schemes for stationary compressible particle-laden gas flows

Abstract

The derivation of macroscopic models for particle-laden gas flows is reviewed. Semi-implicit and Newton-like finite element methods are developed for the stationary two-fluid model governing compressible particle-laden gas flows. The Galerkin discretization of the inviscid fluxes is potentially oscillatory and unstable. To suppress numerical oscillations, the spatial discretization is performed by a high-resolution finite element scheme based on algebraic flux correction. A multidimensional limiter of TVD type is employed. An important goal is the efficient computation of stationary solutions in a wide range of Mach numbers. This is a challenging task due to oscillatory correction factors associated with TVD-type flux limiters and the additional strong nonlinearity caused by interfacial coupling terms. A semi-implicit scheme is derived by a time-lagged linearization of the nonlinear residual, and a Newton-like method is obtained in the limit of infinite CFL numbers. The original Jacobian is replaced by a low-order approximation. Special emphasis is laid on the numerical treatment of weakly imposed boundary conditions. It is shown that the proposed approach offers unconditional stability and faster convergence rates for increasing CFL numbers. The strongly coupled solver is compared to operator splitting techniques, which are shown to be less robust.