Basics of the Numerics

Balkrishna Patankar
Till now ….
 Philosophy of CFD
 Derived and examined the governing equations for fluid
dynamics .
 Looked into boundary conditions
 Also into the behavior of partial differential equations
 Now is the time for the numerics ….
 Here we present some of the basics of discretization i.e.
how to replace those pde’s with numbers .
 Basic aspects of discretization
 In essence it is breaking up of the closed-form
mathematical expression
 Analytical solution  Continuous
 Numerical Solution  At certain points only … Grid
points
 Introduction to Finite Differences

2
f  2 f (x)  n f (x) n
f ( x  x)  f ( x)  x  2  ...  n  ....
x x 2 x n!
 Solve for
 u 
 
 x ij
 We get
 Truncation Error : It gives an expression for what is being
neglected .
 The lowest order term in the truncation error involves ∆x
to the first power , hence it is first order accurate .
 Since the expression involves i and i+1 it does not
consider the cell at i-1 . Hence it is known as forward
difference .

 Explicit and Implicit Approaches
 We have done nothing more than create tools .
 The way these tools are put together and used for a given
solution is called a CFD technique , and we have not
discussed any techniques so far .
 These techniques generally fall into 2 categories :
 Explicit
 Implicit
The 1D heat equation
 Let us consider the 1D heat equation as a model :

T T 2
 2
t x
 After appropriate substitution of the discretized forms we
get ,
The Explicit Finite Difference Module
 Lets rewrite the differences in terms of their averages .
 We get

 This is known as the implicit form.

The Implicit Finite Difference Module
 Now the implicit approach is really complex .
 Then why chose it in the first place ??
 Why not simply go for an explicit approach .
 Stability …..
 In solving problems , once the ∆x is chosen , ∆t is not an
independent choice .
 It is restricted by the stability criteria.
 Most implicit approaches are not restricted by this . Infact
some of them are unconditionally stable .
The CFL condition

ct
C 1
x
Thank You

Have a nice day