Increasing the accuracy in locally divergence-preserving finite volume schemes for MHD

It is of utmost interest to control the divergence of the magnetic flux in simulations of the ideal magnetohydrodynamic equations since, in general, divergence errors tend to accumulate and render the schemes unstable. This paper presents a higher-order extension of the locally divergence-preserving procedure developed in Torrilhon [M. Torrilhon, Locally divergence-preserving upwind finite volume schemes for magnetohydrodynamic equations, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 26 (2005) 1166–1191]; a fourth-order accurate local redistribution of the numerical magnetic field fluxes of a finite volume base scheme is introduced. The redistribution ensures that a fourth-order accurate discrete divergence operator is preserved to round off errors when applied to the cell averages of the magnetic flux density. The developed procedure is applicable to generic semi-discrete finite volume schemes and its purpose is to stabilize the schemes using a local procedure that respects the accuracy of the base scheme to a greater extent than the previous second-order achievements. Numerical experiments that demonstrate the properties of the new procedure are also presented. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. AMS: 35L65; 35L45; 65M06; 76N15