Studies in multigrid acceleration of some equations of interest in fluid dynamics

Abstract

The paper describes the multigrid acceleration technique to compute numerical solutions of three equations of common fluid mechanical interest; Laplace equation, transonic full potential equation and Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations. Starting with the simple and illustrative multigrid studies on the Laplace equation, the paper discusses its application to the cases of full potential equation and the Navier-Stokes equations. The paper also discusses some elements of multigrid strategies like V- and W-cycles, their relative efficiencies, the effect of number of grid levels on the convergence rate and the large CPU time saving obtained from the multigrid acceleration. A few computed cases of transonic flows past airfoils using the full potential equations and the Navier-Stokes equations are presented. A comparison of these results with the experimental data shows good agreement of pressure distribution and skin friction. With the greatly accelerated multigrid convergence, the full potential code typically takes about 10 seconds and the Navier-Stokes code for turbulent flows takes about 5 to 15 min of CPU time on the Convex 3820 computer on a mesh which resolves the flow quantities to good levels of accuracy. This low CPU time demand, made possible due to multigrid acceleration, on one hand, and the robustness and accuracy on the other, offers these codes as designer’s tools for evaluating the characteristics of the airfoils.