Multigrid solution of the 3‐D compressible euler equations on unstructured tetrahedral grids

Abstract

Abstract A low storage, computationally efficient algorithm for the solution of the compressible Euler equations on unstructured tetrahedral meshes is developed. The algorithm takes the form of a centred scheme with the explicit addition of a high accuracy artificial viscosity and the solution is advanced to steady state by means of a multi‐stage time stepping method. The side based data structure which is employed enables a clear connection to be established between the proposed algorithm and upwind cell vertex schemes for unstructured meshes. The computational efficiency of the procedure is improved by incorporating an unstructured multigrid acceleration procedure. A number of flows of practical interest are analysed to demonstrate the numerical performance of the proposed approach.