Finitevolumemethod

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Thefinitevolumemethod(FVM)isamethodforrepresentingandevaluatingpartialdifferentialequationsin
theformofalgebraicequations[LeVeque,2002Toro,1999].Similartothefinitedifferencemethodorfinite
elementmethod,valuesarecalculatedatdiscreteplacesonameshedgeometry."Finitevolume"referstothe
smallvolumesurroundingeachnodepointonamesh.Inthefinitevolumemethod,volumeintegralsinapartial
differentialequationthatcontainadivergencetermareconvertedtosurfaceintegrals,usingthedivergence
theorem.Thesetermsarethenevaluatedasfluxesatthesurfacesofeachfinitevolume.Becausetheflux
enteringagivenvolumeisidenticaltothatleavingtheadjacentvolume,thesemethodsareconservative.
Anotheradvantageofthefinitevolumemethodisthatitiseasilyformulatedtoallowforunstructuredmeshes.
Themethodisusedinmanycomputationalfluiddynamicspackages.

Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6

1Dexample
Generalconservationlaw
Seealso
References
Furtherreading
Externallinks

1Dexample
Considerasimple1Dadvectionproblemdefinedbythefollowingpartialdifferentialequation

Here,
representsthestatevariableand
representsthefluxorflowof .
Conventionally,positive representsflowtotherightwhilenegative representsflowtotheleft.Ifwe
assumethatequation(1)representsaflowingmediumofconstantarea,wecansubdividethespatialdomain,
,intofinitevolumesorcellswithcellcentresindexedas .Foraparticularcell, ,wecandefinethevolume
averagevalueof

andattime

where

attime

and

,as

as,

and

representlocationsoftheupstreamanddownstreamfacesoredgesrespectivelyofthe

cell.
Integratingequation(1)intime,wehave:

where

Toobtainthevolumeaverageof

attime

anddividetheresultby

,weintegrate

overthecellvolume,

,i.e.

Weassumethat iswellbehavedandthatwecanreversetheorderofintegration.Also,recallthatflowis
normaltotheunitareaofthecell.Now,sinceinonedimension
,wecanapplythedivergence
theorem,i.e.

,andsubstituteforthevolumeintegralofthedivergencewiththevaluesof

evaluatedatthecellsurface(edges

where

and

)ofthefinitevolumeasfollows:

Wecanthereforederiveasemidiscretenumericalschemefortheaboveproblemwithcellcentresindexedas ,
andwithcelledgefluxesindexedas

wherevaluesfortheedgefluxes,

,bydifferentiating(6)withrespecttotimetoobtain:

,canbereconstructedbyinterpolationorextrapolationofthecell

averages.Equation(7)isexactforthevolumeaveragesi.e.,noapproximationshavebeenmadeduringits
derivation.
Thismethodcanalsobeappliedtoa2Dsituationbyconsideringthenorthandsouthfacesalongwiththeeast
andwestfacesaroundanode.

Generalconservationlaw
Wecanalsoconsiderthegeneralconservationlawproblem,representedbythefollowingPDE,

Here, representsavectorofstatesand representsthecorrespondingfluxtensor.Againwecansubdivide

thespatialdomainintofinitevolumesorcells.Foraparticularcell, ,wetakethevolumeintegraloverthe
totalvolumeofthecell, ,whichgives,

Onintegratingthefirsttermtogetthevolumeaverageandapplyingthedivergencetheoremtothesecond,this
yields

where representsthetotalsurfaceareaofthecelland isaunitvectornormaltothesurfaceandpointing

outward.So,finally,weareabletopresentthegeneralresultequivalentto(8),i.e.

Again,valuesfortheedgefluxescanbereconstructedbyinterpolationorextrapolationofthecellaverages.
Theactualnumericalschemewilldependuponproblemgeometryandmeshconstruction.MUSCL
reconstructionisoftenusedinhighresolutionschemeswhereshocksordiscontinuitiesarepresentinthe
solution.
Finitevolumeschemesareconservativeascellaverageschangethroughtheedgefluxes.Inotherwords,one
cell'slossisanothercell'sgain!

Seealso
Finiteelementmethod
Fluxlimiter
Godunov'sscheme
Godunov'stheorem
Highresolutionscheme
KIVA(Software)
MITGeneralCirculationModel
MUSCLscheme
SergeiK.Godunov
Totalvariationdiminishing
Finitevolumemethodforunsteadyflow

References
Eymard,R.Gallout,T.R.Herbin,R.(2000)ThefinitevolumemethodHandbookofNumerical
Analysis,Vol.VII,2000,p.7131020.Editors:P.G.CiarletandJ.L.Lions.
LeVeque,Randall(2002),FiniteVolumeMethodsforHyperbolicProblems,CambridgeUniversity
Press.
Toro,E.F.(1999),RiemannSolversandNumericalMethodsforFluidDynamics,SpringerVerlag.

Furtherreading
Patankar,SuhasV.(1980),NumericalHeatTransferandFluidFlow,Hemisphere.
Hirsch,C.(1990),NumericalComputationofInternalandExternalFlows,Volume2:Computational
MethodsforInviscidandViscousFlows,Wiley.
Laney,CulbertB.(1998),ComputationalGasDynamics,CambridgeUniversityPress.
LeVeque,Randall(1990),NumericalMethodsforConservationLaws,ETHLecturesinMathematics
Series,BirkhauserVerlag.
Tannehill,JohnC.,etal.,(1997),ComputationalFluidmechanicsandHeatTransfer,2ndEd.,Taylor

andFrancis.
Wesseling,Pieter(2001),PrinciplesofComputationalFluidDynamics,SpringerVerlag.

Externallinks
Thefinitevolumemethod(http://www.cmi.univmrs.fr/~herbin/PUBLI/bookevol.pdf)byR.Eymard,T
GalloutandR.Herbin,updateofthearticlepublishedinHandbookofNumericalAnalysis,2000
Rbenknig,Oliver."TheFiniteVolumeMethod(FVM)Anintroduction".Archivedfromtheoriginal
on20091002.,availableundertheGFDL.
FiPy:AFiniteVolumePDESolverUsingPython(http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/fipy/)fromNIST.
CLAWPACK(http://depts.washington.edu/clawpack/):asoftwarepackagedesignedtocompute
numericalsolutionstohyperbolicpartialdifferentialequationsusingawavepropagationapproach
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