On the use of central difference scheme for Navier–Strokes equations

Abstract

AbstractBoth the central and upwind difference schemes are commonaly employed to solve the Navier‐Stokes equations governing the two‐dimensional laminar flow of an incompressible laminar flow of an incompressible viscous fluid. By a judicious choice of a damping parameter and using direct methods for solving the systems of linear equations appearing in an iterative procedure, the central difference scheme could be made to give convergent results even for large Reynolds numbers. Using a model problem of flow through a driven square cavity it is shown that the converged results so obtained become progressively oscillatory and inaccurate as the Reynolds number increases. It is known that the central difference scheme gives more accurate results than the upwind difference scheme, at least for small values of Reynolds number. However, for a reasonably small mesh size the numerical solutions obtained by using either the central or the upwind difference scheme do not differ appreciably at low Reynolds numbers. There is a small range of Reynolds numbers for which the central difference scheme may yield more accurate results than the upwind difference scheme; however, this range is not known a priori.