A new fully coupled method for computing turbulent flows

This work discusses the computation of the steady, turbulent, two-dimension al incompressible viscous flow on structured cell-centered collocated grids . A rather new computational approach - the so-called fully coupled procedu re with defect correction technique - is presented as an alternative both t o classical decoupled approaches (SIMPLE [Int, J. Heat Mass Transfer 15 (19 72) 1787-1806], PISO [J. Comput. Phys. 62(1) (1986) 40-65] and variants) an d to weakly coupled solution methods of Vanka type [Fifth symposium on Turb ulent Shear flows, 1985, p. 20:27-32, J. Comput. Phys. 65 (1986) 138-158]. Its main features will be highlighted and detailed. This strategy is evalua ted on two demanding test cases (the simulation of the separated flow past an AS240-B airfoil at high incidence (19 degrees, Re = 3 x 10(6)) and the s imulation of the wake now behind a two-dimensional hill (Re = 60 000)), for which documented experimental data are available. Both robustness and comp utational efficiency of the new approach are shown. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.