A Meshless Radial Basis Function Method for Fluid Flow with Heat Transfer

A Meshless Radial Basis Function Method for Fluid Flow with Heat Transfer K Nagamani Devi1, D.W. Pepper2 Summary Over the past few years, efforts have been made to solve fluid flow and heat transfer problems using radial basis functions. This approach is meshless, easy to understand, and simple to implement. Preliminary results indicate accuracies on the order of finely meshed conventional techniques, but with considerably less computational effort. In this study, a projection-based technique is used to solve the primitive equations of motion and energy using radial basis functions. Three benchmark test cases are examined: (1) lid-driven cavity flow, (2) natural convection in a square enclosure, and (3) flow with forced convection over backward facing step. Results are compared with COMSOL and FLUENT – two popular commercial CFD packages.