THE FINITE VOLUME METHOD

1.1 what is CFD?

Computational fluid dynamics or CFD is the analysis of systems
involving
• fluid flow,
• heat transfer
• and associated phenomena such as chemical reactions
by means of computer-based simulation.

The technique is very powerful and spans a wide range of industrial and
non-industrial application areas.
1.1 what is CFD?
Some examples are:
• aerodynamics of aircraft and vehicles: lift and drag
• hydrodynamics of ships
• power plant: combustion in internal combustion engines and gas turbines
• turbomachinery: flows inside rotating passages, diffusers etc.
• electrical and electronic engineering: cooling of equipment including microcircuits
• chemical process engineering: mixing and separation, polymer molding
• external and internal environment of buildings: wind loading and heating/ventilation
• marine engineering: loads on off-shore structures
• environmental engineering: distribution of pollutants and effluents
• hydrology and oceanography: flows in rivers, estuaries, oceans
• meteorology: weather prediction
• biomedical engineering: blood flows through arteries and veins
1.1 what is CFD?
Moreover, there are several unique advantages of CFD over experiment-
based approaches to fluid systems design:
• substantial reduction of lead times and costs of new designs
• ability to study systems where controlled experiments are difficult or
impossible to perform (e.g. very large systems)
• ability to study systems under hazardous conditions at and beyond their normal
performance limits (e.g. safety studies and accident scenarios)
• practically unlimited level of detail of results
1.2 how does a CFD code /work?
CFD codes are structured around the numerical algorithms that can tackle
fluid flow problems.
In order to provide easy access to their solving power
all commercial CFD packages include sophisticated user interfaces to input
problem parameters and to examine the results.

Hence all codes contain three main elements:

(i) a pre-processor,
(ii) a solver and
(iii) a post-processor.
Pre-processor
Pre-processing consists of the input of a flow problem to a CFD program by
means of an operator-friendly interface and the subsequent transformation
of this input into a form suitable for use by the solver.
The user activities at the pre-processing stage involve:
• Definition of the geometry of the region of interest: the computational domain
• Grid generation – the sub-division of the domain into a number of smaller, non-
overlapping sub-domains: a grid (or mesh) of cells (or control volumes or elements)
• Selection of the physical and chemical phenomena that need to be modelled
• Definition of fluid properties
• Specification of appropriate boundary conditions at cells which coincide
with or touch the domain boundary
Solver
There are three distinct streams of numerical solution techniques:
finite difference,
finite element and
spectral methods.
We shall be solely concerned with the finite volume method, a special finite difference
formulation that is central to the most well-established CFD codes: CFX/ANSYS,
FLUENT,PHOENICS and STAR-CD.
In outline the numerical algorithm consists of the following steps:
• Integration of the governing equations of fluid flow over all the (finite) control
volumes of the domain
• Discretisation – conversion of the resulting integral equations into a system of
algebraic equations
• Solution of the algebraic equations by an iterative method
 The first step, the control volume integration, distinguishes the finite volume
method from all other CFD techniques.

The resulting statements express the (exact) conservation of relevant properties for
each finite size cell.
This clear relationship between the numerical algorithm and the underlying
physical conservation principle forms one of the main attractions of the finite volume
method and makes its concepts much more simple to understand by engineers than the
finite element and spectral methods.
 The conservation of a general flow variable ϕ, e.g. a velocity component or
enthalpy, within a finite control volume can be expressed as a balance
between the various processes tending to increase or decrease it.

In words we have:
CFD codes contain
• discretization techniques suitable for the treatment of the key transport
phenomena,
• convection (transport due to fluid flow)
• and diffusion (transport due to variations of ϕ from point to point)
• as well as for the source terms (associated with the creation or destruction of ϕ) and the
rate of change with respect to time.

The underlying physical phenomena are complex and non-linear so

an iterative solution approach is required.
 The most popular solution procedures are by the TDMA (tri-diagonal
matrix algorithm) line-by-line solver of the algebraic equations and the
SIMPLE algorithm to ensure correct linkage between pressure and velocity.

Commercial codes may also give the user a selection of further, more recent,
Gauss–Seidel point iterative techniques
techniques such as with
multigrid accelerators and conjugate gradient methods.
Post-processor
As in pre-processing, a huge amount of development work has recently taken
place in the post-processing field.
Due to the increased popularity of engineering workstations, many of which have
outstanding graphics capabilities, the leading CFD packages are now equipped with
versatile data visualization tools.

These include:
• Domain geometry and grid display
• Vector plots
• Line and shaded contour plots
• 2D and 3D surface plots
• Particle tracking
• View manipulation (translation, rotation, scaling etc.)
• Colour PostScript output
 More recently these facilities may also include
• animation for dynamic result display,
• and in addition to graphics all codes produce trusty alphanumeric output
• and have data export facilities for further manipulation external to the code.
As in many other branches of CAE, the graphics output capabilities
of CFD codes have revolutionised the communication of ideas to the non-specialist.
1.3 Problem solving with CFD
In solving fluid flow problems we need to be aware that the underlying physics is
complex and the results generated by a CFD code are at best as good as the physics (and
chemistry) embedded in it and at worst as good as its operator.

Elaborating on the latter issue first, the user of a code must have skills in a number
of areas.

Prior to setting up and running a CFD simulation there is a stage of identification and
formulation of the flow problem in terms of the physical and chemical phenomena
that need to be considered.

Typical decisions that might be needed are whether to model a problem in

two or three dimensions, to exclude the effects of ambient temperature or
pressure variations on the density of an air flow, to choose to solve the
turbulent flow equations or to neglect the effects of small air bubbles dissolved in
tap water.
 Performing the computation itself requires operator skills of a different kind.
Specification of the domain geometry and grid design are the main
tasks at the input stage and subsequently the user needs to obtain a
successful simulation result.

The two aspects that characterise such a result are convergence

and grid independence.
The solution algorithm is iterative in nature, and in a converged
solution the so-called residuals – measures of the overall conservation of the
flow properties – are very small.

Progress towards a converged solution can be greatly assisted by careful selection

of the settings of various relaxation factors and acceleration
devices.
There are no straightforward guidelines for making these choices since they are problem
dependent.
Optimisation of the solution speed requires considerable experience with the
code itself, which can only be acquired by extensive use.

There is no formal way of estimating the errors introduced by inadequate grid

design for a general flow.
Good initial grid design relies largely on an insight into the expected properties of the flow.

A background in the fluid dynamics of the particular problem certainly helps, and
experience with gridding of similar problems is also invaluable.
 To make the right choices requires good modelling skills, because
in all but the simplest problems we need to make assumptions to reduce the
complexity to a manageable level whilst preserving the salient features of the
problem at hand.

It is the appropriateness of the simplifications introduced at this stage that at least partly
governs the quality of the information generated by CFD, so the user must continually be
aware of all the assumptions, clear-cut and tacit ones, that have been made.
The only way to eliminate errors due to coarseness of a grid is to
perform a grid dependence study, which is a procedure of successive
refinement of an initially coarse grid until certain key results do not
change.

Then the simulation is grid independent.

A systematic search for grid-independent results forms an essential part of all high-
quality CFD studies.
Every numerical algorithm has its own characteristic error patterns. Well-known CFD
euphemisms for the word ‘error’ are terms such as numerical diffusion, false diffusion
or even numerical flow.

The likely error patterns can only be guessed on the basis of a thorough knowledge of
the algorithms.

At the end of a simulation the user must make a judgement whether the results
are ‘good enough’.
It is impossible to assess the validity of the models of physics and chemistry embedded
in a program as complex as a CFD code or the accuracy of its final results by any means
other than comparison with experimental test work.
Anyone wishing to use CFD in a serious way must realise that it is no substitute for
experimentation, but a very powerful additional problem solving tool.
Validation of a CFD code requires highly detailed information concerning the boundary
conditions of a problem, and generates a large volume of results.

To validate these in a meaningful way it is necessary to produce experimental data of

similar scope.
This may in volvea programme of flow velocity measurements with hot-wire
anemometry, laser Doppler anemometry or particle image velocimetry.

However, if the environment is too hostile for such delicate laboratory equipment or if
it is simply not available, static pressure and temperature measurements
complemented by pitot-static tube traverses can also be useful to validate some aspects
of a flow field
Sometimes the facilities to perform experimental work may not (yet)
exist, in which case the CFD user must rely on
(i) previous experience,
(ii) comparisons with analytical solutions of similar but simpler flows and

(iii) comparisons with high-quality data from closely related problems reported in
the literature.
CFD computation involves the creation of a set of numbers that (hope-fully) constitutes a
realistic approximation of a real-life system.
One of the advantages of CFD is that the user has an almost unlimited choice of
the level of detail of the results, but in the prescient words of C.
It is clear that there are guidelines for good operating practice which can assist the user of
a CFD code, and repeated validation plays a key role as the final quality control
mechanism.

However, the main ingredients for success in CFD are experience and a thorough
understanding of the physics of fluid flows and the fundamentals of the numerical
algorithms.

Without these it is very unlikely that the user will get the best out of a code.
It is the intention of this book to provide all the necessary background material for
a good understanding of the internal workings of a CFD code and its successful
operation.
1.1 What is CFD? 1
1.2 How does a CFD code work? 2
1.3 Problem solving with CFD