arXiv subjects

Kun Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Kun Xu.

At least 343 records · Page 19Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Unified Gas-kinetic Scheme with Multigrid Convergence for Rarefied Flow Study

The unified gas kinetic scheme (UGKS) is a direct modeling method based on the gas dynamical model on the mesh size and time step scales. With the implementation of particle transport and collision in a time-dependent flux function, the UGKS can recover multiple flow physics from the kinetic particle transport to the hydrodynamic wave propagation. In comparison with direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), the equations-based UGKS can use the implicit techniques in the updates of macroscopic conservative variables and microscopic distribution function. The implicit UGKS significantly increases the convergence speed for steady flow computations, especially in the highly rarefied and near continuum regime. In order to further improve the computational efficiency, for the first time a geometric multigrid technique is introduced into the implicit UGKS, where the prediction step for the equilibrium state and the evolution step for the distribution function are both treated with multigrid acceleration. The multigrid implicit UGKS (MIUGKS) is used in the non-equilibrium flow study, which includes microflow, such as lid-driven cavity flow and the flow passing through a finite-length flat plate, and high speed one, such as supersonic flow over a square cylinder. The MIUGKS shows 5 to 9 times efficiency increase over the previous implicit scheme. For the low speed microflow, the efficiency of MIUGKS is several orders of magnitude higher than the DSMC. Even for the hypersonic flow at Mach number 5 and Knudsen number 0.1, the MIUGKS is still more than 100 times faster than the DSMC method for a convergent steady state solution.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2017

Grid-converged Solution and Analysis of the Unsteady Viscous Flow in a Two-dimensional Shock Tube

The flow in a shock tube is extremely complex with dynamic multi-scale structures of sharp fronts, flow separation, and vortices due to the interaction of the shock wave, the contact surface, and the boundary layer over the side wall of the tube. Prediction and understanding of the complex fluid dynamics is of theoretical and practical importance. It is also an extremely challenging problem for numerical simulation, especially at relatively high Reynolds numbers. Daru & Tenaud (Daru, V. & Tenaud, C. 2001 Evaluation of TVD high resolution schemes for unsteady viscous shocked flows. Computers & Fluids 30, 89-113) proposed a two-dimensional model problem as a numerical test case for high-resolution schemes to simulate the flow field in a square closed shock tube. Though many researchers have tried this problem using a variety of computational methods, there is not yet an agreed-upon grid-converged solution of the problem at the Reynolds number of 1000. This paper presents a rigorous grid-convergence study and the resulting grid-converged solutions for this problem by using a newly-developed, efficient, and high-order gas-kinetic scheme. Critical data extracted from the converged solutions are documented as benchmark data. The complex fluid dynamics of the flow at Re = 1000 are discussed and analysed in detail. Major phenomena revealed by the numerical computations include the downward concentration of the fluid through the curved shock, the formation of the vortices, the mechanism of the shock wave bifurcation, the structure of the jet along the bottom wall, and the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability near the contact surface.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

On the apparent permeability of porous media in rarefied gas flows

The apparent gas permeability of the porous medium is an important parameter in the prediction of unconventional gas production, which was first investigated systematically by Klinkenberg in 1941 and found to increase with the reciprocal mean gas pressure (or equivalently, the Knudsen number). Although the underlying rarefaction effects are well-known, the reason that the correction factor in Klinkenberg's famous equation decreases when the Knudsen number increases has not been fully understood. Most of the studies idealize the porous medium as a bundle of straight cylindrical tubes, however, according to the gas kinetic theory, this only results in an increase of the correction factor with the Knudsen number, which clearly contradicts Klinkenberg's experimental observations. Here, by solving the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook equation in simplified (but not simple) porous media, we identify, for the first time, two key factors that can explain Klinkenberg's experimental results: the tortuous flow path and the non-unitary tangential momentum accommodation coefficient for the gas-surface interaction. Moreover, we find that Klinkenberg's results can only be observed when the ratio between the apparent and intrinsic permeabilities is $\lesssim30$; at large ratios (or Knudsen numbers) the correction factor increases with the Knudsen number. Our numerical results could also serve as benchmarking cases to assess the accuracy of macroscopic models and/or numerical schemes for the modeling/simulation of rarefied gas flows in complex geometries over a wide range of gas rarefaction.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

On the magnetic field of the ultraluminous X-ray pulsar M82 X-2

The discovery of the ultraluminous X-ray pulsar M82 X-2 has stimulated lively discussion on the nature of the accreting neutron star. In most of the previous studies the magnetic field of the neutron star was derived from the observed spin-up/down rates based on the standard thin, magnetized accretion disk model. However, under super-Eddington accretion the inner part of the accretion disk becomes geometrically thick. In this work we consider both radiation feedback from the neutron star and the sub-Keplerian rotation in a thick disk, and calculate the magnetic moment - mass accretion rate relations for the measured rates of spin change. We find that the derived neutron star's dipole magnetic field depends the maximum accretion rate adopted, but is likely $\lesssim 10^{13}$ G. The predicted accretion rate change can be used to test the proposed models by comparison with observations.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

A Unified Gas Kinetic Scheme for Multi-scale and Multi-component Plasma Transport

A unified gas kinetic scheme (UGKS) for multi-scale and multi-component plasma transport is constructed. The current scheme is a direct modeling method, where the time evolution solutions from the Vlasov-BGK equations of electron and ion and the Maxwell equations are used to construct a scale-dependent plasma simulation model. As a result, with the changing of modeling scales of mesh size and time step and with a variation of Knudsen number and Larmor radius, the discretized governing equations for a wide range of plasma evolution regimes can be obtained. The physics recovered in UGKS ranges from the Vlasov equation in the kinetic scale to different-type magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) equations in the hydrodynamic scale. The key dynamics in UGKS is the un-splitting treatment of particle collision, acceleration, and transport in the construction of numerical flux across a cell interface. At the same time, the plasma evolution is coupled with the Maxwell equations in an implicit way, which automatically provides a smooth transition between the Ampere's law and the Ohm's law for the calculation of electric field. The time step of UGKS is not limited by the relaxation time, the cyclotron period, and the speed of light in the MHD regime. The UGKS is validated by numerical test cases, such as the Landau damping and two stream instability in the kinetic regime, and the Brio-Wu shock tube problem and the Orszag- Tang MHD turbulence problem in the hydrodynamic regime. The scheme is also used to study the geospace environment modeling (GEM), such as the challenging magnetic reconnection problem in the transition regime. Overall, the UGKS is a physically reliable multi-scale plasma simulation method. It provides a powerful and unified approach for the study of plasma physics.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2017

A comment on `An improved macroscale model for gas slip flow in porous media'

In a recent paper by Lasseux, Valdés-Parada and Porter (J.~Fluid~Mech. \textbf{805} (2016) 118-146), it is found that the apparent gas permeability of the porous media is a nonlinear function of the Knudsen number. However, this result is highly questionable, because the adopted Navier-Stokes equations and the first-order velocity-slip boundary condition are first-order (in terms of the Knudsen number) approximations of the Boltzmann equation and the kinetic boundary condition for rarefied gas flows. Our numerical simulations based on the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook kinetic equation and regularized 20-moment equations prove that the Navier-Stokes equations with the first-order velocity-slip boundary condition are only accurate at a very small Knudsen number limit, where the apparent gas permeability is a linear function of the Knudsen number.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2016

Linear commuting maps and skew-symmertric biderivations of the deformative Schrodinger-Virasoro Lie algebras

In this paper, we investigate the skew-symmertric biderivations of the deformative Schrodinger-Virasoro Lie algebras which contain the twisted and original deformative Schrodinger-Virasoro Lie algebras. As an application, we give the explicit form of each linear commuting map on the deformative Schrodinger-Virasoro Lie algebras. In particular, we obtain that there exist non-inner biderivations and non-standard linear commuting maps for the certain deformative Schrodinger-Virasoro Lie algebras.

math.RA↗

arXiv2016

Simplification of the Flux Function for a Higher-order Gas-kinetic Evolution Model

The higher-order gas-kinetic scheme for solving the Navier-Stokes equations has been studied in recent years. In addition to the use of higher-order reconstruction techniques, many terms are used in the Taylor expansion of the gas distribution functions. Therefore, a large number of coefficients need to be determined in the calculation of the time evolution of the gas distribution function at cell interfaces. As a consequence, the higher-order flux function takes much more computational time than that of a second-order gas-kinetic scheme. This paper aims to simplify the evolution model by two steps. Firstly, the coefficients related to the higher-order spatial and temporal derivatives of a distribution function are redefined to reduce the computational cost. Secondly, based on the physical analysis, some terms can be removed without loss of accuracy. Through the simplifications, the computational efficiency of the higher-order scheme is increased significantly. In addition, a self-adaptive numerical viscosity is designed to minimize the necessary numerical dissipation. Several numerical examples are tested to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the current scheme.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2016

A Few Benchmark Test Cases for Higher-order Euler Solvers

There have been great efforts on the development of higher-order numerical schemes for compressible Euler equations. The traditional tests mostly targeting on the strong shock interactions alone may not be adequate to test the performance of higher-order schemes. This study will introduce a few test cases with a wide range of wave structures for testing higher-order schemes. As reference solutions, all test cases will be calculated by our recently developed two-stage fourth-order gas-kinetic scheme (GKS). All examples are selected so that the numerical settings are very simple and any high order accurate scheme can be straightly used for these test cases, and compare their performance with the GKS solutions. The examples include highly oscillatory solutions and the large density ratio problem in one dimensional case; hurricane-like solutions, interactions of planar contact discontinuities (the composite of entropy wave and vortex sheets) sheets with large Mach number asymptotic, interaction of planar rarefaction waves with transition from continuous flows to the presence of shocks, and other types of interactions of two-dimensional planar waves. The numerical results from the fourth-order gas-kinetic scheme provide reference solutions only. These benchmark test cases will help CFD developers to validate and further develop their schemes to a higher level of accuracy and robustness.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

A Well-Balanced Unified Gas-Kinetic Scheme for Multiscale Flow Transport Under Gravitational Field

The gas dynamics under gravitational field is usually associated with the multiple scale nature due to large density variation and a wide range of local Knudsen number. It is chal- lenging to construct a reliable numerical algorithm to accurately capture the non-equilibrium physical effect in different regimes. In this paper, a well-balanced unified gas-kinetic scheme (UGKS) for all flow regimes under gravitational field will be developed, which can be used for the study of non-equilibrium gravitational gas system. The well-balanced scheme here is defined as a method to evolve an isolated gravitational system under any initial condition to an isothermal hydrostatic equilibrium state and to keep such a solution. To preserve such a property is important for a numerical scheme, which can be used for the study of slowly evolving gravitational system, such as the formation of star and galaxy. Based on the Boltzmann model with external forcing term, an analytic time evolving (or scale-dependent) solution is constructed to provide the corresponding dynamics in the cell size and time step scale, which is subsequently used in the construction of UGKS. As a result, with the varia- tion of the ratio between the numerical time step and local particle collision time, the UGKS is able to recover flow physics in different regimes and provides a continuum spectrum of gas dynamics. For the first time, the flow physics of a gravitational system in the transition regime can be studied using the UGKS, and the non-equilibrium phenomena in such a grav- itational system can be clearly identified. Many numerical examples will be used to validate the scheme. New physical observation, such as the correlation between the gravitational field and the heat flux in the transition regime, will be presented. The current method provides an indispensable tool for the study of non-equilibrium gravitational system.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2016

A Paradigm for Modeling and Computation of Gas Dynamics

In the continuum flow regime, the Navier-Stokes equations are usually used for the description of gas dynamics. On the other hand, the Boltzmann equation is applied for the rarefied gas dynamics. Both equations are constructed from modeling flow physics in different scales. Fortunately, due to the distinct separation of scales, i.e., the hydrodynamic and kinetic ones, both Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation are valid in their respectable domains. However, in real physical application, there may not have such a distinctive scale separation. For example, around a hypersonic flying vehicle, the flow physics at different regions may correspond to different regimes, where the local Knudsen number can be changed in several order of magnitudes. With a variation of modeling scale, theoretically a continuous governing equation from kinetic Boltzmann equation to the hydrodynamic Navier-Stokes equations should exist. However, due to the difficulties of a direct modeling of flow physics in the scale between the kinetic and hydrodynamic ones, there is basically no reliable theory or valid governing equation to cover the whole transition regime. In fact, it is an unresolved problem about the exact scale for the validity of the NS equations as Reynolds number decreases. The traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is based on the numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDE), and it targets on the recovering of the exact solution of the PDEs as mesh size and time step converging to zero. This methodology can be hardly applied here because there is no such a complete PDE for flow physics in all scales. It may be the time to combine the modeling and computation together without going through the process of constructing PDEs. In other words, the CFD research is not only to obtain the numerical solution of governing equation, but also to construct a valid discrete governing equation to identify the flow physics in the mesh size and time step scales. In this paper, we are going to present the idea for the modeling and computation. This methodology leads to the unified gas-kinetic scheme (UGKS) for flow simulation in all flow regimes. Based on UGKS, the boundary for the validation of the Navier-Stokes equations can be quantitatively evaluated. The combination of modeling and computation provides a paradigm for the description of multiscale transport process.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2016

Question Answering on Freebase via Relation Extraction and Textual Evidence

Existing knowledge-based question answering systems often rely on small annotated training data. While shallow methods like relation extraction are robust to data scarcity, they are less expressive than the deep meaning representation methods like semantic parsing, thereby failing at answering questions involving multiple constraints. Here we alleviate this problem by empowering a relation extraction method with additional evidence from Wikipedia. We first present a neural network based relation extractor to retrieve the candidate answers from Freebase, and then infer over Wikipedia to validate these answers. Experiments on the WebQuestions question answering dataset show that our method achieves an F_1 of 53.3%, a substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2016

Onsager's Cross Coupling Effects in Gas Flows Confined to Micro-channels

In rarefied gases, mass and heat transport processes interfere with each other, leading to the mechano-caloric effect and thermo-osmotic effect, which are of interest to both theoretical study and practical applications. We employ the unified gas-kinetic scheme to investigate these cross coupling effects in gas flows in micro-channels. Our numerical simulations cover channels of planar surfaces and also channels of ratchet surfaces, with Onsager's reciprocal relation verified for both cases. For channels of planar surfaces, simulations are performed in a wide range of Knudsen number and our numerical results show good agreement with the literature results. For channels of ratchet surfaces, simulations are performed for both the slip and transition regimes and our numerical results not only confirm the theoretical prediction [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 164502 (2011)] for Knudsen number in the slip regime but also show that the off-diagonal kinetic coefficients for cross coupling effects are maximized at a Knudsen number in the transition regime. Finally, a preliminary optimization study is carried out for the geometry of Knudsen pump based on channels of ratchet surfaces.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2016

An Efficient and Accurate Two-Stage Fourth-order Gas-kinetic Scheme for the Navier-Stokes Equations

For computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the generalized Riemann problem (GRP) solver and the gas-kinetic kinetic scheme (GKS) provide a time-accurate flux function starting from a discontinuous piecewise linear flow distributions around each cell interface. With the use of time derivative of the flux function, a two-stage Lax-Wendroff-type (L-W for short) time stepping method has been recently proposed in the design of a fourth-order time accurate method [18]. In this paper, based on the same time-stepping method and the second-order GKS flux function [34], a fourth-order gas-kinetic scheme is constructed for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. In comparison with the formal one-stage time-stepping third-order gas-kinetic solver [21], the current fourth-order method not only reduces the complexity of the flux function, but also improves the accuracy of the scheme, even though the third- and fourth-order schemes have similar computation cost. Most importantly, the robustness of the fourth-order GKS is as good as the second-order one. Perfect numerical solutions can be obtained from the high Reynolds number boundary layer solutions to the hypersonic viscous heat conducting flow computations. Many numerical tests, including many difficult ones for the Navier-Stokes solvers, have been used to validate the current fourth-order method. Following the two-stage time-stepping framework, the one-stage third-order GKS can be easily extended to a fifth-order method with the usage of both first-order and second-order time derivatives of the flux function. The use of time-accurate flux function may have great impact on the development of higher-order CFD methods.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

A simplification of the unified gas kinetic scheme

Unified gas kinetic scheme (UGKS) is an asymptotic preserving scheme for the kinetic equations. It is superior for transition flow simulations, and has been validated in the past years. However, compared to the well known discrete ordinate method (DOM) which is a classical numerical method solving the kinetic equations, the UGKS needs more computational resources. In this study, we propose a simplification of the unified gas kinetic scheme. It allows almost identical numerical cost as the DOM, but predicts numerical results as accurate as the UGKS. Based on the observation that the equilibrium part of the UGKS fluxes can be evaluated analytically, the equilibrium part in the UGKS flux is not necessary to be discretized in velocity space. In the simplified scheme, the numerical flux for the velocity distribution function and the numerical flux for the macroscopic conservative quantities are evaluated separately. The simplification is equivalent to a flux hybridization of the gas kinetic scheme for the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations and conventional discrete ordinate method. Several simplification strategies are tested, through which we can identify the key ingredient of the Navier-Stokes asymptotic preserving property. Numerical tests show that, as long as the collision effect is built into the macroscopic numerical flux, the numerical scheme is Navier-Stokes asymptotic preserving, regardless the accuracy of the microscopic numerical flux for the velocity distribution function.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2016

Phonon Boltzmann equation-based discrete unified gas kinetic scheme for multiscale heat transfer

Numerical prediction of multiscale heat transfer is a challenging problem due to the wide range of time and length scales involved. In this work a discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is developed for heat transfer in materials with different acoustic thickness based on the phonon Boltzmann equation. With discrete phonon direction, the Boltzmann equation is discretized with a second-order finite-volume formulation, in which the time-step is fully determined by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition. The scheme has the asymptotic preserving (AP) properties for both diffusive and ballistic regimes, and can present accurate solutions in the whole transition regime as well. The DUGKS is a self-adaptive multiscale method for the capturing of local transport process. Numerical tests for both heat transfers with different Knudsen numbers are presented to validate the current method.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2016

A Third-order Compact Gas-kinetic Scheme on Unstructured Meshes for Compressible Navier-Stokes Solutions

In this paper, for the first time a compact third-order gas-kinetic scheme is proposed on unstructured meshes for the compressible viscous flow computations. The possibility to de sign such a third-order compact scheme is due to the high-order gas evolution model, where a time-dependent gas distribution function at a cell interface not only provides the fluxes across a cell interface, but also the time evolution of the flow variables at the cell interface as well. As a result, both cell averaged and cell interface flow variables can be used for the initial data reconstruction at the beginning of next time step. A weighted least-square reconstruction has been used for the construction of a third-order initial condition. Therefore, a compact third-order gas-kinetic scheme with the involvement of neighboring cells only can be developed on unstructured meshes. In comparison with other conventional high-order schemes, the current method avoids the use of Gaussian points for the flux integration along a cell interface and the multi-stage Runge-Kutta time stepping technique. The third-order compact scheme is numerically stable under CFL condition above 0.5. Due to the multidimensional gas-kinetic formulation and the coupling of inviscid and viscous terms, even with unstructured meshes the boundary layer solution and the vortex structure can be accurately captured in the current scheme. At the same time, the compact scheme can capture strong shocks as well.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

An Alternative Analysis of Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Hyperbolic Conservation Law

The development and application of the Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method have attracted great attention in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) com- munity in the past decades. The underlying reason for such an intensive investigation is due to favorable properties of the DG method, such as higher order, compactness, and easy parallelization. However, for the compressible flow simulations, the DG method is also associated with unfavorable prop- erties, such as the frequent instabilities in non-smooth regions. Due to the finite element formulation, except the update of the cell averaged conserva- tive flow variable, it becomes rather difficulty to fully understand the physical mechanism in the DG method for the updates of other degrees of freedom in- side each element. In this short note, based on the linear advection equation we are going to analyze the DG method in an alternative way. The results obtained may be useful for the CFD community for its further development of the DG methods.

math.NA↗