Introduction to the Numerical Analysis of Incompressible Viscous Flows treats the numerical analysis of finite element computational fluid dynamics. Assuming minimal background, the text covers finite element methods; the derivation, behavior, analysis, and numerical analysis of Navier-Stokes equations; and turbulence and turbulence models used in simulations. Each chapter on theory is followed by a numerical analysis chapter that expands on the theory. This book provides the foundation for understanding the interconnection of the physics, mathematics, and numerics of the incompressible case, which is essential for progressing to the more complex flows not addressed in this book (e.g., viscoelasticity, plasmas, compressible flows, coating flows, flows of mixtures of fluids, and bubbly flows). With mathematical rigor and physical clarity, the book progresses from the mathematical preliminaries of energy and stress to finite element computational fluid dynamics in a format manageable in one semester. Audience: this unified treatment of fluid mechanics, analysis, and numerical analysis is intended for graduate students in mathematics, engineering, physics, and the sciences who are interested in understanding the foundations of methods commonly used for flow simulations.

This monograph is intended as a concise and self-contained guide to practitioners and graduate students for applying approaches in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to real-world problems that require a quantification of viscous incompressible flows. In various projects related to NASA missions, the authors have gained CFD expertise over many years by developing and utilizing tools especially related to viscous incompressible flows. They are looking at CFD from an engineering perspective, which is especially useful when working on real-world applications. From that point of view, CFD requires two major elements, namely methods/algorithm and engineering/physical modeling. As for the methods, CFD research has been performed with great successes. In terms of modeling/simulation, mission applications require a deeper understanding of CFD and flow physics, which has only been debated in technical conferences and to a limited scope. This monograph fills the gap by offering in-depth examples for students and engineers to get useful information on CFD for their activities. The procedural details are given with respect to particular tasks from the authors’ field of research, for example simulations of liquid propellant rocket engine subsystems, turbo-pumps and the blood circulations in the human brain as well as the design of artificial heart devices. However, those examples serve as illustrations of computational and physical challenges relevant to many other fields. Unlike other books on incompressible flow simulations, no abstract mathematics are used in this book. Assuming some basic CFD knowledge, readers can easily transfer the insights gained from specific CFD applications in engineering to their area of interest.

This monograph is intended as a concise and self-contained guide to practitioners and graduate students for applying approaches in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to real-world problems that require a quantification of viscous incompressible flows. In various projects related to NASA missions, the authors have gained CFD expertise over many years by developing and utilizing tools especially related to viscous incompressible flows. They are looking at CFD from an engineering perspective, which is especially useful when working on real-world applications. From that point of view, CFD requires two major elements, namely methods/algorithm and engineering/physical modeling. As for the methods, CFD research has been performed with great successes. In terms of modeling/simulation, mission applications require a deeper understanding of CFD and flow physics, which has only been debated in technical conferences and to a limited scope. This monograph fills the gap by offering in-depth examples for students and engineers to get useful information on CFD for their activities. The procedural details are given with respect to particular tasks from the authors’ field of research, for example simulations of liquid propellant rocket engine subsystems, turbo-pumps and the blood circulations in the human brain as well as the design of artificial heart devices. However, those examples serve as illustrations of computational and physical challenges relevant to many other fields. Unlike other books on incompressible flow simulations, no abstract mathematics are used in this book. Assuming some basic CFD knowledge, readers can easily transfer the insights gained from specific CFD applications in engineering to their area of interest.

"Consists mainly of papers presented at a workshop ... held in Half Moon Bay, California, June 19-21, 2001 ... to honor Dr. Dochan Kwak on the occasion of his 60th birthday ... organized by M. Hafez of University of California Davis and Dong Ho Lee of Seoul National University"--Dedication, p. ix.

This well-written book explains the theory of spectral methods and their application to the computation of viscous incompressible fluid flow, in clear and elementary terms. With many examples throughout, the work will be useful to those teaching at the graduate level, as well as to researchers working in the area.

In developing this book, we decided to emphasize applications and to provide methods for solving problems. As a result, we limited the mathematical devel opments and we tried as far as possible to get insight into the behavior of numerical methods by considering simple mathematical models. The text contains three sections. The first is intended to give the fundamen tals of most types of numerical approaches employed to solve fluid-mechanics problems. The topics of finite differences, finite elements, and spectral meth ods are included, as well as a number of special techniques. The second section is devoted to the solution of incompressible flows by the various numerical approaches. We have included solutions of laminar and turbulent-flow prob lems using finite difference, finite element, and spectral methods. The third section of the book is concerned with compressible flows. We divided this last section into inviscid and viscous flows and attempted to outline the methods for each area and give examples.

The study of incompressible ?ows is vital to many areas of science and te- nology. This includes most of the ?uid dynamics that one ?nds in everyday life from the ?ow of air in a room to most weather phenomena. Inundertakingthesimulationofincompressible?uid?ows,oneoftentakes many issues for granted. As these ?ows become more realistic, the problems encountered become more vexing from a computational point-of-view. These range from the benign to the profound. At once, one must contend with the basic character of incompressible ?ows where sound waves have been analytically removed from the ?ow. As a consequence vortical ?ows have been analytically “preconditioned,” but the ?ow has a certain non-physical character (sound waves of in?nite velocity). At low speeds the ?ow will be deterministic and ordered, i.e., laminar. Laminar ?ows are governed by a balance between the inertial and viscous forces in the ?ow that provides the stability. Flows are often characterized by a dimensionless number known as the Reynolds number, which is the ratio of inertial to viscous forces in a ?ow. Laminar ?ows correspond to smaller Reynolds numbers. Even though laminar ?ows are organized in an orderly manner, the ?ows may exhibit instabilities and bifurcation phenomena which may eventually lead to transition and turbulence. Numerical modelling of suchphenomenarequireshighaccuracyandmostimportantlytogaingreater insight into the relationship of the numerical methods with the ?ow physics.