Cell Size Effect on Computational Fluid Dynamics: The Limitation Principle for Flow Simulation

Abstract: For theoretical gas dynamics, the flow regimes are classified according to the Knudsen number. For computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the numerical flow field is the projection of the physical flow field onto the discrete space and time, which is related to the cell Knudsen number. The real representable flow regimes are controlled by these two parameters. According to the values of Knudsen number and cell Knudsen number, we study the classification of the numerical flow regimes. In the process of mesh refinement, the numerical experiments show the change of numerical flow regime from continuum, to near-continuum, and to non-equilibrium one. The change of flow regime with different cell resolution is the limitation principle for the numerical simulation, which is the best a multiscale method can do. In other words, we should have changeable numerical governing equations in different mesh size scale, and they are coupled with the traditional physical equations in different scales, such as the Navier-Stokes and Boltzmann. Under the multiscale modeling, a mesh refinement is a process in resolving the flow physics in different scale. The verification and validation (V$&$V) need include the physical modeling mechanism in the mesh refinement process. The traditional idea of mesh refinement for targeting a fixed partial differential equation cannot achieve the final goal of computation, which is to recover the flow physics as truthfully as possible under the limitation of the cell resolution.