Kinetic meshless method for compressible flows

Abstract

We present a grid-free or meshless approximation called the kinetic meshless method (KMM), for the numerical solution of hyperbolic conservation laws that can be obtained by taking moments of a Boltzmann-type transport equation. The meshless formulation requires the domain discretization to have very little topological information; a distribution of points in the domain together with local connectivity information is sufficient. For each node, the connectivity consists of a set of nearby nodes which are used to evaluate the spatial derivatives appearing in the conservation law. The derivatives are obtained using a modified form of the least-squares approximation. The method is applied to the Euler equations for inviscid flow and results are presented for some 2-D problems. The ability of the new scheme to accurately compute inviscid flows is clearly demonstrated, including good shock capturing ability. Comparisons with other grid-free methods are made showing some advantages of the current approach. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.