INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER COMPUTATIONS USING A CONTINUOUS PRESSURE EQUATION AND NONSTAGGERED GRIDS

Abstract

A pressure-based algorithm for incompressible flows is presented. The algorithm employs a finite-volume discretization in general curvilinear coordinates on a nonstaggered mesh. This approach is derived from a finite-element algorithm, and is here extended to the finite-volume/finite-difference context. The algorithm can be classified as a SIMPLE-like sequential method, and is validated in two classical test cases: the lid-driven cavity and the differentially heated cavity problems. Good results, with no pressure checkerboarding, are achieved up to Reynolds numbers Re = 10⁴ and Rayleigh numbers Ra = 10⁸ , respectively.