A Control Volume Finite Element Method for Potential Flow Analysis

Abstract

A control volume finite element method for simulation of potential flow is presented. The formulation is developed for triangular mesh which has the linear interpolation of stream function over the element. The control volume finite element method (CVFEM) based on triangular mesh provides low computational cost as compared with the high order numerical method and high flexibility to find the stream function in complex shaped domain as compared with the analytical method and finite difference method. The accuracy of the present method is demonstratedby solving three test cases, i.e. flow through a straight channel, flow around a circular cylinder and flow through a backward facing ramp.