Well-balanced Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian finite volume schemes on moving nonconforming meshes for the Euler equations of gas dynamics with gravity

Abstract

In this work we present a novel second order accurate well balanced Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite volume scheme on moving nonconforming meshes for the Euler equations of compressible gasdynamics with gravity in cylindrical coordinates. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is the capability of preserving many of the physical properties of the system exactly also on the discrete level: besides being conservative for mass, momentum and total energy, also any known steady equilibrium between pressure gradient, centrifugal force and gravity force can be exactly maintained up to machine precision. Perturbations around such equilibrium solutions are resolved with high accuracy and with minimal dissipation on moving contact discontinuities even for very long computational times. This is achieved by the novel combination of well balanced path-conservative finite volume schemes, that are expressly designed to deal with source terms written via nonconservative products, with ALE schemes on moving grids, which exhibit only very little numerical dissipation on moving contact waves. In particular, we have formulated a new HLL-type and a novel Osher-type flux that are both able to guarantee the well balancing in a gas cloud rotating around a central object. Moreover, to maintain a high level of quality of the moving mesh, we have adopted a nonconforming treatment of the sliding interfaces that appear due to the differential rotation. A large set of numerical tests has been carried out in order to check the accuracy of the method close and far away from the equilibrium, both, in one and two space dimensions.