An operator-splitting scheme for the stream function–vorticity formulation of the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations

摘要

The stream function–vorticity formulation of the (Navier–)Stokes equations yields a coupled system of a parabolic equation for the vorticity and an elliptic equation for the stream function. The essential coupling between them occurs through the boundary conditions which in case of a Dirichlet boundary involve only the stream function. Therefore, the boundary condition for the vorticity must be derived from them and thus the vorticity equation must be coupled to the stream function equation via its boundary condition. In this paper we propose an unconditionally stable splitting scheme for the unsteady Stokes equations in a stream function–vorticity formulation, that decouples the vorticity and stream function computations at each time step. The spatial discretization is based on a finite volume discretization on (generally) unstructured Delaunay grids and corresponding Voronoi finite volume cells. A generalization of the well-known Thom vorticity boundary condition is derived for such grids and the corresponding discrete problem is decoupled by a two-step splitting scheme which results in a decoupled discrete parabolic problem for the vorticity and an elliptic problem for the stream function. Furthermore, the scheme is extended to the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations. Finally, the stability and accuracy of the resulting schemes are demonstrated on numerical examples.