This review paper discusses the developments in immersed or unfitted finite element methods over the past decade. The main focus is the analysis and the treatment of the adverse effects of small cut elements. We distinguish between adverse effects regarding the stability and adverse effects regarding the conditioning of the system, and we present an overview of the developed remedies. In particular, we provide a detailed explanation of Schwarz preconditioning, element aggregation, and the ghost penalty formulation. Furthermore, we outline the methodologies developed for quadrature and weak enforcement of Dirichlet conditions, and we discuss open questions and future research directions.@en

In this work, we propose Runge-Kutta time integration schemes for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with two salient properties. First, velocity and pressure computations are segregated at the time integration level, without the need to perform additional fractional step techniques that spoil high orders of accuracy. Second, the proposed methods keep the same order of accuracy for both velocities and pressures. The segregated Runge-Kutta methods are motivated as an implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta time integration of the projected Navier-Stokes system onto the discrete divergence-free space, and its re-statement in a velocity-pressure setting using a discrete pressure Poisson equation. We have analysed the preservation of the discrete divergence constraint for segregated Runge-Kutta methods and their relation (in their fully explicit version) with existing half-explicit methods. We have performed a detailed numerical experimentation for a wide set of schemes (from first to third order), including implicit and IMEX integration of viscous and convective terms, for incompressible laminar and turbulent flows. Further, segregated Runge-Kutta schemes with adaptive time stepping are proposed.@en

The variational multiscale method thought as an implicit large eddy simulation model for turbulent flows has been shown to be an alternative to the widely used physical-based models. This method is traditionally combined with equal-order velocity-pressure pairs, since it provides pressure stabilization. In this work, we consider a different approach, based on inf-sup stable elements and convection-only stabilization. In order to do so, we consider a symmetric projection stabilization of the convective term using an orthogonal subscale decomposition. The accuracy and efficiency of this method compared with residual-based algebraic subgrid scales and orthogonal subscales methods for equal-order interpolation is assessed in this paper. Moreover, when inf-sup stable elements are used, the grad-div stabilization term has been shown to be essential to guarantee accurate solutions. Hence, a study of the influence of such term in the large eddy simulation of turbulent incompressible flows is also performed. Furthermore, a recursive block preconditioning strategy has been considered for the resolution of the problem with an implicit treatment of the projection terms. Two different benchmark tests have been solved: the Taylor-Green Vortex flow with Re=1600, and the Turbulent Channel Flow at Reτ=395 and Reτ=590.@en

In this work, we develop a high-performance numerical framework for the large eddy simulation (LES) of incompressible flows. The spatial discretization of the nonlinear system is carried out using mixed finite element (FE) schemes supplemented with symmetric projection stabilization of the convective term and a penalty term for the divergence constraint. These additional terms introduced at the discrete level have been proved to act as implicit LES models. In order to perform meaningful wall-unresolved simulations, we consider a weak imposition of the boundary conditions using a Nitsche's-type scheme, where the tangential component penalty term is designed to act as a wall law. Next, segregated Runge–Kutta (SRK) schemes (recently proposed by the authors for laminar flow problems) are applied to the LES simulation of turbulent flows. By the introduction of a penalty term on the trace of the acceleration, these methods exhibit excellent stability properties for both implicit and explicit treatment of the convective terms. SRK schemes are excellent for large-scale simulations, since they reduce the computational cost of the linear system solves by splitting velocity and pressure computations at the time integration level, leading to two uncoupled systems. The pressure system is a Darcy-type problem that can easily be preconditioned using a traditional block-preconditioning scheme that only requires a Poisson solver. At the end, only coercive systems have to be solved, which can be effectively preconditioned by multilevel domain decomposition schemes, which are both optimal and scalable. The framework is applied to the Taylor–Green and turbulent channel flow benchmarks in order to prove the accuracy of the convection-stabilized mixed FEs as LES models and SRK time integrators. The scalability of the preconditioning techniques (in space only) has also been proven for one step of the SRK scheme for the Taylor–Green flow using uniform meshes. Moreover, a turbulent flow around a NACA profile is solved to show the applicability of the proposed algorithms for a realistic problem.@en

In this work we study the performance of some variational multiscale models (VMS) in the large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows. We consider VMS models obtained by different subgrid scale approximations which include either static or dynamic subscales, linear or nonlinear multiscale splitting, and different choices of the subscale space. After a brief review of these models, we discuss some implementation aspects particularly relevant to the simulation of turbulent flows, namely the use of a skew symmetric form of the convective term and the computation of projections when orthogonal subscales are used. We analyze the energy conservation (and numerical dissipation) of the alternative VMS formulations, which is numerically evaluated. In the numerical study, we have considered three well known problems: the decay of homogeneous isotropic turbulence, the Taylor-Green vortex problem and the turbulent flow in a channel. We compare the results obtained using different VMS models, paying special attention to the effect of using orthogonal subscale spaces. The VMS results are also compared against classical LES scheme based on filtering and the dynamic Smagorinsky closure. Altogether, our results show the tremendous potential of VMS for the numerical simulation of turbulence. Further, we study the sensitivity of VMS to the algorithmic constants and analyze the behavior in the small time step limit. We have also carried out a computational cost comparison of the different formulations. Out of these experiments, we can state that the numerical results obtained with the different VMS formulations (as far as they converge) are quite similar. However, some choices are prone to instabilities and the results obtained in terms of computational cost are certainly different. The dynamic orthogonal subscales model turns out to be best in terms of efficiency and robustness.@en