International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids

An accurate Fourier–Chebyshev spectral collocation method has been developed for simulating flow past prolate spheroids. The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are transformed to the prolate spheroidal co-ordinate system and discretized on an orthogonal body fitted mesh. The infinite flow domain is truncated to a finite extent and a Chebyshev discretization is used in the wall-normal direction. The azimuthal direction is periodic and a conventional Fourier expansion is used in this direction. The other wall-tangential direction requires special treatment and a restricted Fourier expansion that satisfies the parity conditions across the poles is used. Issues including spatial and temporal discretization, efficient inversion of the pressure Poisson equation, outflow boundary condition and stability restriction at the pole are discussed. The solver has been validated primarily by simulating steady and unsteady flow past a sphere at various Reynolds numbers and comparing key quantities with corresponding data from experiments and other numerical simulations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.