On the Geometric Conservation Law for the Non Linear Frequency Domain and Time-Spectral methods

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present and validate two new procedures to enforce the Geometric Conservation Law (GCL) on a moving grid for an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation for the Euler equations discretized in time for either the Non Linear Frequency Domain (NLFD) or Time-Spectral (TS) methods. The equations are spatially discretized by a structured finite-volume scheme on a hexahedral mesh. The derived methodologies follow a general approach where the positions and the velocities of the grid points are known at each time step. The integrated face mesh velocities are derived either from the Approximation of the Exact Volumetric Increments (AEVI) relative to the undeformed mesh or exactly computed based on a Trilinear Mapping (TRI-MAP) between the physical space and the computational domain. The accuracy of the AEVI method highly depends on the computation of the volumetric increments and limits the temporal-order of accuracy of the deduced integrated face mesh velocities to between one and two. Thus defeating the purpose of the NLFD method which possesses spectral rate of convergence. However, the TRI-MAP method has proven to be more computationally efficient, ensuring the satisfaction of the GCL once the convergence of the temporal derivative of the cell volume is reached in Fourier space. The methods are validated numerically by verifying the conservation of uniform flow and by comparing the integrated face mesh velocities to the exact values derived from the mapping. Their performances for aerodynamic simulation are evaluated for a pitching NACA0012 airfoil.