An artificial compressibility based fractional step method for solving time dependent incompressible flow equations. Temporal accuracy and similarity with a monolithic method

In this note, an artificial compressibility based fractional step method is analysed against a monolithic scheme for solving incompressible flow equations. The artificial compressibility (AC) procedure presented in this paper is stabilized via a characteristic based split (CBS), and thus it is referred to as the AC-CBS method. The monolithic method used for comparison in the present study is the pressure stabilized Petrov–Galerkin (PSPG) method. It is shown that the AC-CBS and PSPG procedures are identical in structure, except for the stabilization parameters. For unsteady problems, a dual time stepping algorithm is employed in the AC-CBS scheme. Unlike classical fractional step methods, this dual time stepping mechanism circumvents the temporal pressure splitting error, and thus provides the anticipated temporal accuracy. The temporal accuracy of the AC-CBS method is demonstrated via a standard benchmark problem. Up to fourth order time accurate schemes are introduced for a thorough analysis of the AC-CBS scheme.