SOLUTION OF THE DIV-CURL PROBLEM IN GENERALIZED CURVILINEAR COORDINATES

We propose a method for solving the div-curl problem on a structured n onorthogonal curvilinear grid, The differential operators are discreti zed using a MAC-scheme for the unknowns in such a way that the discret e counterparts of the usual vector analysis relations are satisfied. T he derived discrete problem is then solved by performing a Helmholtz-t ype decomposition of the unknown vector field. This allows us to obtai n a vector field for which both divergence and curl are satisfied to w ithin machine accuracy. The method is validated for several configurat ions In two and three dimensions, and its accuracy is numerically chec ked. (C) 1997 Academic Press.