Semi-implicit staggered discontinuous Galerkin schemes for axially symmetric viscous compressible flows in elastic tubes

Abstract

We propose a novel family of staggered semi-implicit discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element schemes for the simulation of axially symmetric, weakly compressible and laminar viscous flows in elastic pipes. The equation of state (EOS) of the fluid is assumed to be barotropic and two different mathematical models derived from the compressible Navier-Stokes equations are considered in this paper.The first model describes cross-sectionally averaged 1D flows, including steady and frequency-dependent wall friction effects. The novelty of our numerical method compared to standard DG schemes consists in the use of a staggered mesh, where the pressure is defined over a primary grid and the velocity field is defined on edge-based staggered dual control volumes. This approach is well known from classical semi-implicit finite difference schemes for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, but it is still quite unusual for high order DG schemes. The continuity equation is integrated over the control volumes that belong to the main grid, while the momentum equation is integrated over the elements of the edge-based staggered dual grid. The nonlinear convective terms are discretized explicitly, while the pressure gradient and the mass flux are discretized implicitly. Up to second order of accuracy in time can be achieved with the so-called θ-method. Inserting the discrete momentum equation in the discrete mass conservation equation leads to a mildly nonlinear algebraic system for the degrees of freedom of the pressure. Such mildly nonlinear systems can be very efficiently solved using the Newton algorithm of Brugnano and Casulli. We observe that the linear part of the mildly nonlinear system is symmetric and positive definite.The second model is derived from the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates. Assuming hydrostatic flow with constant pressure inside each cross section as well as axial symmetry, only the terms in the axial and the radial direction need to be considered. Therefore, we call the second model the 2Dxr model. Also in this case we use a staggered mesh for pressure and velocity and thus the same philosophy as for the 1D model can be applied to obtain the discrete pressure system. For the 2Dxr model a staggered DG scheme is also applied for the computation of the viscous stress tensor in the discrete momentum equation. However, in radial direction the resulting linear system for the friction terms is not symmetric and is thus solved using the Thomas algorithm for block three-diagonal systems.The use of a semi-implicit DG scheme leads to a very mild CFL condition based only on the fluid velocity and not on the sound speed, which makes the method very efficient, in particular in the limit cases when the speed of sound of the fluid tends to infinity (incompressible fluid) and in the rigid case where the wall strain of the pipe tends to zero. In addition, at every Newton step a symmetric positive definite and well conditioned block three-diagonal linear system is solved for the pressure, using a matrix-free conjugate gradient method. Moreover, when the polynomial degree of the basis and test functions is equal to zero the schemes reduce to classical semi-implicit finite volume methods.While in the 2Dxr model the viscous effects in radial direction are directly obtained from first principles via the Navier-Stokes equations, the 1D model requires an additional closure relation for the wall friction. For both models we perform several tests in order to validate the numerical methods for steady and unsteady flows of compressible and nearly incompressible fluids in elastic and rigid tubes. We also provide numerical convergence results in order to show that the developed schemes achieve high order of accuracy in space.