Travis C. Fisher

Cavopulmonary assist for the univentricular Fontan circulation: Von Kármán viscous impeller pump

OBJECTIVE In a univentricular Fontan circulation, modest augmentation of existing cavopulmonary pressure head (2-5 mm Hg) would reduce systemic venous pressure, increase ventricular filling, and thus substantially improve circulatory status. An ideal means of providing mechanical cavopulmonary support does not exist. We hypothesized that a viscous impeller pump, based on the von Kármán viscous pump principle, is optimal for this role. METHODS A 3-dimensional computational model of the total cavopulmonary connection was created. The impeller was represented as a smooth 2-sided conical actuator disk with rotation in the vena caval axis. Flow was modeled under 3 conditions: (1) passive flow with no disc; (2) passive flow with a nonrotating disk, and (3) induced flow with disc rotation (0-5K rpm). Flow patterns and hydraulic performance were examined for each case. Hydraulic performance for a vaned impeller was assessed by measuring pressure increase and induced flow over 0 to 7K rpm in a laboratory mock loop. RESULTS A nonrotating actuator disc stabilized cavopulmonary flow, reducing power loss by 88%. Disk rotation (from baseline dynamic flow of 4.4 L/min) resulted in a pressure increase of 0.03 mm Hg. A further increase in pressure of 5 to 20 mm Hg and 0 to 5 L/min flow was obtained with a vaned impeller at 0 to 7K rpm in a laboratory mock loop. CONCLUSIONS A single viscous impeller pump stabilizes and augments cavopulmonary flow in 4 directions, in the desired pressure range, without venous pathway obstruction. A viscous impeller pump applies to the existing staged protocol as a temporary bridge-to-recovery or -transplant in established univentricular Fontan circulations and may enable compressed palliation of single ventricle without the need for intermediary surgical staging or use of a systemic-to-pulmonary arterial shunt.

Entropy Stable Spectral Collocation Schemes for the Navier-Stokes Equations: Discontinuous Interfaces

Nonlinear entropy stability and a summation-by-parts framework are used to derive provably stable, polynomial-based spectral collocation element methods of arbitrary order for the compressible Navier--Stokes equations. The new methods are similar to strong form, nodal discontinuous Galerkin spectral elements but conserve entropy for the Euler equations and are entropy stable for the Navier--Stokes equations. Shock capturing follows immediately by combining them with a dissipative companion operator via a comparison approach. Smooth and discontinuous test cases are presented that demonstrate their efficacy.

Discretely conservative finite-difference formulations for nonlinear conservation laws in split form: Theory and boundary conditions

The Lax-Wendroff theorem stipulates that a discretely conservative operator is necessary to accurately capture discontinuities. The discrete operator, however, need not be derived from the divergence form of the continuous equations. Indeed, conservation law equations that are split into linear combinations of the divergence and product rule form and then discretized using any diagonal-norm skew-symmetric summation-by-parts (SBP) spatial operator, yield discrete operators that are conservative. Furthermore, split-form, discretely conservation operators can be derived for periodic or finite-domain SBP spatial operators of any order. Examples are presented of a fourth-order, SBP finite-difference operator with second-order boundary closures. Sixth- and eighth-order constructions are derived, and are supplied in an accompanying text file.

High-order entropy stable finite difference schemes for nonlinear conservation laws: Finite domains

Nonlinear entropy stability is used to derive provably stable high-order finite difference operators including boundary closure stencils, for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. A comparison technique is used to derive a new Entropy Stable Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (SSWENO) finite difference method, appropriate for simulations of problems with shocks. Viscous terms are approximated using conservative, entropy stable, narrow-stencil finite difference operators. The efficacy of the new discrete operators is demonstrated using both smooth and discontinuous test cases.

High-order incompressible large-eddy simulation of fully inhomogeneous turbulent flows

The subgrid-scale (SGS) eddy-viscosity model developed by Vreman [Phys. Fluids 16 (2004) 3670] and its dynamic version [Phys. Fluids 19 (2007) 065110] are tested in large-eddy simulations (LES) of the turbulent flow in an Re=12,000 lid-driven cubical cavity by comparison to the direct numerical simulation (DNS) data of Leriche and Gavrilakis [Phys. Fluids 12 (2000) 1363]. This appears to be the first test of this class of model to flows without any homogeneous flow directions, which is typical of flows in complex geometries. Additional LES predictions at Re=18,000 and Re=22,000 are compared to the DNS data of Leriche [J. Sci. Comp. 27 (2006)]. The new LES framework yielded excellent agreement for both the mean velocity and Reynolds stress profiles and matches DNS data better than the more traditional Smagorinsky-based SGS models.

High-Order Entropy Stable Formulations for Computational Fluid Dynamics

A systematic approach is presented for developing entropy stable (SS) formulations of any order for the Navier-Stokes equations. These SS formulations discretely conserve mass, momentum, energy and satisfy a mathematical entropy inequality. They are valid for smooth as well as discontinuous flows provided sufficient dissipation is added at shocks and discontinuities. Entropy stable formulations exist for all diagonal norm, summation-by-parts (SBP) operators, including all centered finite-difference operators, Legendre collocation finite-element operators, and certain finite-volume operators. Examples are presented using various entropy stable formulations that demonstrate the current state-of-the-art of these schemes.

Entropy Stable Staggered Grid Discontinuous Spectral Collocation Methods of any Order for the Compressible Navier--Stokes Equations

Staggered grid, entropy stable discontinuous spectral collocation operators of any order are developed for the compressible Euler and Navier--Stokes equations on unstructured hexahedral elements. This generalization of previous entropy stable spectral collocation work [M. H. Carpenter, T. C. Fisher, E. J. Nielsen, and S. H. Frankel, SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 36 (2014), pp. B835--B867, M. Parsani, M. H. Carpenter, and E. J. Nielsen, J. Comput. Phys., 292 (2015), pp. 88--113], extends the applicable set of points from tensor product, Legendre--Gauss--Lobatto (LGL), to a combination of tensor product Legendre--Gauss (LG) and LGL points. The new semidiscrete operators discretely conserve mass, momentum, energy, and satisfy a mathematical entropy inequality for the compressible Navier--Stokes equations in three spatial dimensions. They are valid for smooth as well as discontinuous flows. The staggered LG and conventional LGL point formulations are compared on several challenging test problems. The staggered LG ope...

Towards an Entropy Stable Spectral Element Framework for Computational Fluid Dynamics

Entropy stable (SS) discontinuous spectral collocation formulations of any order are developed for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations on hexahedral elements. Recent progress on two complementary efforts is presented. The first effort is a generalization of previous SS spectral collocation work to extend the applicable set of points from tensor product, Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto (LGL) to tensor product Legendre-Gauss (LG) points. The LG and LGL point formulations are compared on a series of test problems. Although being more costly to implement, it is shown that the LG operators are significantly more accurate on comparable grids. Both the LGL and LG operators are of comparable efficiency and robustness, as is demonstrated using test problems for which conventional FEM techniques suffer instability. The second effort generalizes previous SS work to include the possibility of p-refinement at non-conforming interfaces. A generalization of existing entropy stability machinery is developed to accommodate the nuances of fully multi-dimensional summation-by-parts (SBP) operators. The entropy stability of the compressible Euler equations on non-conforming interfaces is demonstrated using the newly developed LG operators and multi-dimensional interface interpolation operators.

High-Order Implicit-Explicit Multi-Block Time-stepping Method for Hyperbolic PDEs

This work seeks to explore and improve the current time-stepping schemes used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in order to reduce overall computational time. A high-order scheme has been developed using a combination of implicit and explicit (IMEX) time-stepping Runge-Kutta (RK) schemes which increases numerical stability with respect to the time step size, resulting in decreased computational time. The IMEX scheme alone does not yield the desired increase in numerical stability, but when used in conjunction with an overlapping partitioned (multi-block) domain significant increase in stability is observed. To show this, the Overlapping-Partition IMEX (OP IMEX) scheme is applied to both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) problems, the nonlinear viscous Burgers equation and 2D advection equation, respectively. The method uses two different summation by parts (SBP) derivative approximations, second-order and fourth-order accurate. The Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed using the Simultaneous Approximation Term (SAT) penalty method. The 6-stage additive Runge-Kutta IMEX time integration schemes are fourth-order accurate in time. An increase in numerical stability 65 times greater than the fully explicit scheme is demonstrated to be achievable with the OP IMEX method applied to 1D Burgers equation. Results from the 2D, purely convective, advection equation show stability increases on the order of 10 times the explicit scheme using the OP IMEX method. Also, the domain partitioning method in this work shows potential for breaking the computational domain into manageable sizes such that implicit solutions for full three-dimensional CFD simulations can be computed using direct solving methods rather than the standard iterative methods currently used.