A Weakly Compressible Flow Model and Rapid Convergence Methods

A weakly compressible flow model for small Mach number flows is applied to the computation of steady and unsteady inviscid flows. The equations of continuity and motion are decoupled from the energy equation, but, unlike the equations for incompressible fluids, these equations retain the ability to represent rapidly changing flows such as hydraulic transients and hydroacoustics. Two methods to speed up the process of convergence when an explicit method is used to calculate steady incompressible flows are proposed. The first method which is quite similar to the artificial compressiblity method is to assume an arbitrarily small sound speed (equivalent to large Mach number) to speed up the convergence. Any positive finite number may be used for M. One disadvantage of this method is the contamination of the steady flow solution by acoustic noise that may reverberate in the flow field for some time after the steady flow has been essentially established. The second method is based on the concept of valve stroking or boundary control. Certain boundary stroking functions that will unify the hydroacoustic and hydrodynamic processes can be found by using the inverse method of classical hydraulic transients. This method yields uncontaminated steady flow solution very rapidly independent of the Mach number.