Solution of Laminar Combusting Flows Using a Parallel Implicit Adaptive Mesh Refinement Algorithm

Numerical methods have become an essential tool for investigating combustion processes. In spite of the advances in solution algorithms and computer hardware, the solution of combusting flows can still place severe demands on available computational resources. In the previous work, Northrup and Groth [1] and Gao and Groth [2] have developed a parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm that both reduces the overall problem size and the time to calculate a solution for non-premixed laminar and turbulent combusting flows. A preconditioned nonlinear multigrid algorithm with multi-stage semi-implicit time marching scheme as a smoother was used to integrate the governing partial differential equations. Although accurate solutions were obtained, for viscous reacting flows, the approach is non-optimal and in many cases a large number of multigrid cycles and solution residual evaluations were required to obtain steady state solutions.