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A discontinuous Galerkin method for gravity-driven viscous fingering instabilities in porous media

Journal of Computational Physics

Scovazzi, Guglielmo S.; Collis, Samuel S.; Gerstenberger, Axel G.

We present a new approach to the simulation of gravity-driven viscous fingering instabilities in porous media flow. These instabilities play a very important role during carbon sequestration processes in brine aquifers. Our approach is based on a nonlinear implementation of the discontinuous Galerkin method, and possesses a number of key features. First, the method developed is inherently high order, and is therefore well suited to study unstable flow mechanisms. Secondly, it maintains high-order accuracy on completely unstructured meshes. The combination of these two features makes it a very appealing strategy in simulating the challenging flow patterns and very complex geometries of actual reservoirs and aquifers. This article includes an extensive set of verification studies on the stability and accuracy of the method, and also features a number of computations with unstructured grids and non-standard geometries.

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Formulation, analysis and numerical study of an optimization-based conservative interpolation (remap) of scalar fields for arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian methods

Journal of Computational Physics

Bochev, Pavel; Ridzal, Denis R.; Scovazzi, Guglielmo S.; Shashkov, Mikhail

We develop and study the high-order conservative and monotone optimization-based remap (OBR) of a scalar conserved quantity (mass) between two close meshes with the same connectivity. The key idea is to phrase remap as a global inequality-constrained optimization problem for mass fluxes between neighboring cells. The objective is to minimize the discrepancy between these fluxes and the given high-order target mass fluxes, subject to constraints that enforce physically motivated bounds on the associated primitive variable (density). In so doing, we separate accuracy considerations, handled by the objective functional, from the enforcement of physical bounds, handled by the constraints. The resulting OBR formulation is applicable to general, unstructured, heterogeneous grids. Under some weak requirements on grid proximity, but not on the cell types, we prove that the OBR algorithm is linearity preserving in one, two and three dimensions. The paper also examines connections between the OBR and the recently proposed flux-corrected remap (FCR), Liska et al. [1]. We show that the FCR solution coincides with the solution of a modified version of OBR (M-OBR), which has the same objective but a simpler set of box constraints derived by using a "worst-case" scenario. Because M-OBR (FCR) has a smaller feasible set, preservation of linearity may be lost and accuracy may suffer for some grid configurations. Our numerical studies confirm this, and show that OBR delivers significant increases in robustness and accuracy. Preliminary efficiency studies of OBR reveal that it is only a factor of 2.1 slower than FCR, but admits 1.5 times larger time steps. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.

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Algorithmic properties of the midpoint predictor-corrector time integrator

Love, Edward L.; Scovazzi, Guglielmo S.; Rider, William J.

Algorithmic properties of the midpoint predictor-corrector time integration algorithm are examined. In the case of a finite number of iterations, the errors in angular momentum conservation and incremental objectivity are controlled by the number of iterations performed. Exact angular momentum conservation and exact incremental objectivity are achieved in the limit of an infinite number of iterations. A complete stability and dispersion analysis of the linearized algorithm is detailed. The main observation is that stability depends critically on the number of iterations performed.

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Variational multiscale residual-based turbulence modeling for large eddy simulation of incompressible flows

Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering

Bazilevs, Y.; Calo, V.M.; Cottrell, J.A.; Hughes, T.J.R.; Reali, A.; Scovazzi, Guglielmo S.

We present an LES-type variational multiscale theory of turbulence. Our approach derives completely from the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and does not employ any ad hoc devices, such as eddy viscosities. We tested the formulation on forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence and turbulent channel flows. In the calculations, we employed linear, quadratic and cubic NURBS. A dispersion analysis of simple model problems revealed NURBS elements to be superior to classical finite elements in approximating advective and diffusive processes, which play a significant role in turbulence computations. The numerical results are very good and confirm the viability of the theoretical framework. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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A mathematical framework for multiscale science and engineering : the variational multiscale method and interscale transfer operators

Bochev, Pavel B.; Collis, Samuel S.; Jones, Reese E.; Lehoucq, Richard B.; Parks, Michael L.; Scovazzi, Guglielmo S.; Silling, Stewart A.; Templeton, Jeremy A.

This report is a collection of documents written as part of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project A Mathematical Framework for Multiscale Science and Engineering: The Variational Multiscale Method and Interscale Transfer Operators. We present developments in two categories of multiscale mathematics and analysis. The first, continuum-to-continuum (CtC) multiscale, includes problems that allow application of the same continuum model at all scales with the primary barrier to simulation being computing resources. The second, atomistic-to-continuum (AtC) multiscale, represents applications where detailed physics at the atomistic or molecular level must be simulated to resolve the small scales, but the effect on and coupling to the continuum level is frequently unclear.

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Results 1–25 of 36
Results 1–25 of 36