An operator splitting numerical scheme for thermal/isothermal incompressible viscous flows

Abstract

A numerical scheme for time-dependent incompressible viscous fluid flow, thermally coupled under the Boussinesq approximation is presented. The scheme combines an operator splitting in the time discretization and linear finite elements in the space discretization, and is an extension of one previously applied for isothermal incompressible viscous flow governed by the Navier–Stokes equations. To show the efficiency of the scheme, numerical results are presented for mixed convection, and natural convection at high Rayleigh numbers. Restricting the scheme to the isothermal case, some numerical results at high Reynolds numbers are included, i.e. the scheme is tested for a small viscosity and a large force term, which are not trivial tasks to deal with. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.