A parallel finite element method for incompressible Navier-Stokes flows based on unstructured grids

This paper presents a parallel finite element method for the large scale co mputation of incompressible Navier-Stokes flows using unstructured grids. T he streamline upwind/Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) formulation is employed to impr ove the numerical stability and accuracy and the pressure stabilization mat rix (PSM) is introduced to avoid the occurrence of the checkerboard pressur e mode. For the finite element, the velocity-tri-linear/pressure-piecewise constant (Q1/P0) element is employed. The pressure Poisson equation is para llelized with the element-by-element scaled conjugate gradient (SCG) method . Parallel implementation of the unstructured-grid-based formulation is car ried out on the Hitachi Parallel Computer SR2201. The effect of paralleliza tion on the efficiency of the computations is examined. (C) 2000 Elsevier S cience S.A. All rights reserved.