An immersed boundary method is proposed in the framework of discrete stream function formulation for incompressible flows. In order to impose the non-slip boundary condition, the forcing term is determined implicitly by solving a linear system. The number of unknowns of the linear system is the same as that of the Lagrangian points representing the body surface. Thus the extra cost in force calculation is negligible if compared with that in the basic flow solver. In order to handle three-dimensional flows at moderate Reynolds numbers, a parallelized flow solver based on the present method is developed using the domain decomposition strategy. To verify the accuracy of the immersed-boundary method proposed in this work, flow problems of different complexity (decaying vortices, flows over stationary and oscillating cylinders and a stationary sphere, and flow over low-aspect-ratio flat-plate) are simulated and the results are in good agreement with the experimental or computational data in previously published literatures.

This paper was published as:
Wang SZ; Zhang X. An immersed boundary method based on discrete stream function formulation for two- and three-dimensional incompressible flows. JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS, 230(9):3479-3499(2011)