A spectral deferred correction method for incompressible flow with variable viscosity

Abstract: This paper presents a semi-implicit spectral deferred correction (SDC) method for incompressible Navier-Stokes problems with variable viscosity and time-dependent boundary conditions. The proposed method integrates elements of velocity- and pressure-correction schemes, which yields a simpler pressure handling and a smaller splitting error than the SDPC method of Minion & Saye (J. Comput. Phys. 375: 797-822, 2018). Combined with the discontinuous Galerkin spectral-element method for spatial discretization it can in theory reach arbitrary order of accuracy in time and space. Numerical experiments in three space dimensions demonstrate up to order 12 in time and 17 in space for constant as well as varying, solution-dependent viscosity. Compared to SDPC the present method yields a substantial improvement of accuracy and robustness against order reduction caused by time-dependent boundary conditions.