Finite difference

About: Finite difference is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 19693 publications have been published within this topic receiving 408603 citations.

Modeling multiphase non-isothermal fluid flow and reactive geochemical transport in variably saturated fractured rocks: 1. methodology

Abstract: Reactive fluid flow and geochemical transport in unsaturated fractured rocks have received increasing attention for studies of contaminant transport, ground- water quality, waste disposal, acid mine drainage remediation, mineral deposits, sedimentary diagenesis, and fluid-rock interactions in hydrothermal systems. This paper presents methods for modeling geochemical systems that emphasize: (1) involvement of the gas phase in addition to liquid and solid phases in fluid flow, mass transport, and chemical reactions; (2) treatment of physically and chemically heterogeneous and fractured rocks, (3) the effect of heat on fluid flow and reaction properties and processes, and (4) the kinetics of fluid-rock interaction. The physical and chemical process model is embodied in a system of partial differential equations for flow and transport, coupled to algebraic equations and ordinary differential equations for chemical interactions. For numerical solution, the continuum equations are discretized in space and time. Space discretization is based on a flexible integral finite difference approach that can use irregular gridding to model geologic structure; time is discretized fully implicitly as a first-order finite difference. Heterogeneous and fractured media are treated with a general multiple interacting continua method that includes double-porosity, dual-permeability, and multi-region models as special cases. A sequential iteration approach is used to treat the coupling between fluid flow and mass transport on the one hand, chemical reactions on the other. Applications of the methods developed here to variably saturated geochemical systems are presented in a companion paper (part 2, this issue).

Fluid Flow Phenomena: A Numerical Toolkit

Abstract: This book deals with the simulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for laminar and turbulent flows. The book is limited to explaining and employing the finite difference method. It furnishes a large number of source codes which permit to play with the Navier-Stokes equations and to understand the complex physics related to fluid mechanics. Numerical simulations are useful tools to understand the complexity of the flows, which often is difficult to derive from laboratory experiments. This book, then, can be very useful to scholars doing laboratory experiments, since they often do not have extra time to study the large variety of numerical methods; furthermore they cannot spend more time in transferring one of the methods into a computer language. By means of numerical simulations, for example, insights into the vorticity field can be obtained which are difficult to obtain by measurements. This book can be used by graduate as well as undergraduate students while reading books on theoretical fluid mechanics; it teaches how to simulate the dynamics of flow fields on personal computers. This will provide a better way of understanding the theory. Two chapters on Large Eddy Simulations have been included, since this is a methodology that in the near future will allow more universal turbulence models for practical applications. The direct simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations (DNS) is simple by finite-differences, that are satisfactory to reproduce the dynamics of turbulent flows. A large part of the book is devoted to the study of homogeneous and wall turbulent flows. In the second chapter the elementary concept of finite difference is given to solve parabolic and elliptical partial differential equations. In successive chapters the 1D, 2D, and 3D Navier-Stokes equations are solved in Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates. Finally, Large Eddy Simulations are performed to check the importance of the subgrid scale models. Results for turbulent and laminar flows are discussed, with particular emphasis on vortex dynamics. This volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers wanting to compare experiments and numerical simulations, and to workers in the mechanical and aeronautic industries.

Propagation, Observation, and Control of Waves Approximated by Finite Difference Methods

Abstract: This paper surveys several topics related to the observation and control of wave propagation phenomena modeled by finite difference methods. The main focus is on the property of observability, corresponding to the question of whether the total energy of solutions can be estimated from partial measurements on a subregion of the domain or boundary. The mathematically equivalent property of controllability corresponds to the question of whether wave propagation behavior can be controlled using forcing terms on that subregion, as is often desired in engineering applications. Observability/controllability of the continuous wave equation is well understood for the scalar linear constant coefficient case that is the focus of this paper. However, when the wave equation is discretized by finite difference methods, the control for the discretized model does not necessarily yield a good approximation to the control for the original continuous problem. In other words, the classical convergence (consistency + stability) property of a numerical scheme does not suffice to guarantee its suitability for providing good approximations to the controls that might be needed in applications. Observability/controllability may be lost under numerical discretization as the mesh size tends to zero due to the existence of high-frequency spurious solutions for which the group velocity vanishes. This phenomenon is analyzed and several remedies are suggested, including filtering, Tychonoff regularization, multigrid methods, and mixed finite element methods. We also briefly discuss these issues for the heat, beam, and Schrodinger equations to illustrate that diffusive and dispersive effects may help to retain the observability/controllability properties at the discrete level. We conclude with a list of open problems and future subjects for research.

Conservative Finite-Difference Approximations of the Primitive Equations on Quasi-Uniform Spherical Grids

Abstract: A class of conservative finite-difference approximations of the primitive equations is given for quasi-uniform spherical grids derived from regular polyhedrons. The earth is split into several contiguous regions. Within each region, a coordinate system derived from central projections is used, instead of the spherical coordinate system, to avoid the use of inconsistent boundary conditions at the poles. The presence of artificial internal boundaries has no effect on the conservation properties of the approximations. Examples of conservative schemes, up to the second order in the case of a cube, are given. A selective damping operator is needed to remove the two-grid interval waves generated by the existence of internal boundaries.

Fast methods for the Eikonal and related Hamilton– Jacobi equations on unstructured meshes

Abstract: The Fast Marching Method is a numerical algorithm for solving the Eikonal equation on a rectangular orthogonal mesh in O(M log M) steps, where M is the total number of grid points. The scheme relies on an upwind finite difference approximation to the gradient and a resulting causality relationship that lends itself to a Dijkstra-like programming approach. In this paper, we discuss several extensions to this technique, including higher order versions on unstructured meshes in Rn and on manifolds and connections to more general static Hamilton-Jacobi equations.