A study of spectral element and discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Navier–Stokes equations in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric modeling: Equation sets and test cases
Abstract
We present spectral element (SE) and discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solutions of the Euler and compressible Navier– Stokes (NS) equations for stratified fluid flow which are of importance in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric modeling. We study three different forms of the governing equations using seven test cases. Three test cases involve flow over moun- tains which require the implementation of non-reflecting boundary conditions, while one test requires viscous terms (den- sity current). Including viscous stresses into finite difference, finite element, or spectral element models poses no additional challenges; however, including these terms to either finite volume or discontinuous Galerkin models requires the introduc- tion of additional machinery because these methods were originally designed for first-order operators. We use the local discontinuous Galerkin method to overcome this obstacle. The seven test cases show that all of our models yield good results. The main conclusion is that equation set 1 (non-conservation form) does not perform as well as sets 2 and 3 (con- servation forms). For the density current (viscous), the SE and DG models using set 3 (mass and total energy) give less dissipative results than the other equation sets; based on these results we recommend set 3 for the development of future multiscale research codes. In addition, the fact that set 3 conserves both mass and energy up to machine precision motives us to pursue this equation set for the development of future mesoscale models. For the bubble and mountain tests, the DG models performed better. Based on these results and due to its conservation properties we recommend the DG method. In the worst case scenario, the DG models are 50% slower than the non-conservative SE models. In the best case scenario, the DG models are just as efficient as the conservative SE models.
Description
Non-hydrostatic Unified Model of the Atmosphere (NUMA)
The first NUMA papers appeared in 2008. From 2008 through 2010, all the NUMA papers appearing involved the 2D (x-z slice) Euler equations. All the theory and numerical implementations were first developed in 2D.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
A study of spectral element and discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Navier-Stokes equations in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric modeling: Equation sets and test cases
Giraldo, F.X.; Restelli, M. (2008);We present spectral element (SE) and discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solutions of the Euler and compressible Navier-Stokes (NS) equations for stratified fluid flow which are of importance in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric ... -
A study of spectral element and discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Navier-Stokes equations in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric modeling: Equation sets and test cases
Giraldo, F.X.; Restelli, M. (Elsevier Inc., 2008);We present spectral element (SE) and discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solutions of the Euler and compressible Navier– Stokes (NS) equations for stratified fluid flow which are of importance in nonhydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric ... -
Development and evaluation of a hydrostatic dynamical core using the spectral element/discontinuous Galerkin methods
Giraldo, F.X.; Choi, S.-J. (Copernicus Publications, 2014-06-26);In this paper, we present a dynamical core for the atmospheric primitive hydrostatic equations using a unified formulation of spectral element (SE) and discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods in the horizontal direction with ...