Abstract:
This article deals with the formulation, implementation, and testing of a fully coupled velocity-pressure algorithm for the solution of laminar incompressible flow problems. The tight velocity-pressure coupling is developed within the context of a collocated structured grid, and the systems of equations involving velocity and pressure are solved simultaneously. The pressure and momentum equations are derived in a way similar to a segregated SIMPLE algorithm [1], yielding an extended set of diagonally dominant equations. An algebraic multigrid solver is used to accelerate the solution of the extended system of equations. The performance of the newly developed coupled algorithm is evaluated by solving three test problems showing the effects of grid size, mesh skewness, large pressure gradients, and large source terms on the convergence behavior. Results are presented in the form of convergence history plots and tabulated values of the maximum number of required iterations, the total CPU time, and the CPU time per control volume. This latter performance indicator is shown to be nearly independent of the grid size.