Space–Time Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method with Dynamic Grid Motion for Inviscid Compressible FlowsI. General Formulation

Abstract

A new space-time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for the solution of the Euler equations of gas dynamics in time-dependent flow domains is presented. The discontinuous Galerkin discretization results in an efficient element-wise conservative upwind finite element method, which is particularly well suited for local mesh refinement. The upwind scheme uses a formulation of the HLLC flux applicable to moving meshes and several formulations for the stabilization operator to ensure monotone solutions around discontinuities are investigated. The non-linear equations of the space-time discretization are solved using a multigrid accelerated pseudo-time integration technique with an optimized Runge-Kutta method. The linear stability of the pseudo-time integration method is investigated for the linear advection equation. The numerical scheme is demonstrated with simulations of the flow field in a shock tube, a channel with a bump, and an oscillating NACA 0012 airfoil. These simulations show that the accuracy of the numerical discretization is $O(h^{5/2})$ in space for smooth subsonic flows, both on structured and locally refined meshes, and that the space-time adaptation can significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of the numerical method.