A Characteristic Algorithm for the 3D Navier-Stokes Equation using padfem2

In this paper we consider a finite element algorithm solving the three dimensional Navier-Stokes equation using the method of characteristics. The algorithm is based on a splitting scheme using a characteristic pressure correction method. It’s well known, that the most expensive part of the characteristic integration scheme consists of the search for the volume that contains the foot of a given characteristic. The present paper considers different techniques for solving this problem and presents a new, efficient formulation of a search algorithm. This algorithm has been implemented based on the parallel data structure provided by the finite element framework padfem2. We present the results that we have obtained applying this algorithm to two well studied flow problems. Furthermore, we show the efficiency of the splitting scheme computed on a massive parallel cluster system.