EFFICIENCY AND ACCURACY ASPECTS OF A FULL-MULTIGRID SIMPLE ALGORITHM FOR THREE-DIMENSIONAL FLOWS

Abstract

This article reports on the analysis of efficiency and accuracy of a fult-multigHd SIMPLE algorithm for three-dimensional flows using co-located grids and central difference discretization for both connective and diffusive fluxes. It is shown that the central differencing scheme—contrary to common belief—offers both good convergence properties and high accuracy, even at large Pedet numbers. Accurate solutions, with discretization errors below 0.5%, were obtained for lid-driven flows in a cubic cavity using grids with up to 128³ (nearly 2.1 million) control volumes. For a grid with 64³ (262,114) control volumes, solution can be obtained on a personal computer in 5-10 min. The computer code used for the calculations reported here is available from authors on request (free of charge).