Vector form of intrinsic finite element method for incompressible fluids

•Lagrange's equation for fluid mechanics is proposed with power functional.•Fluid part of VFIFE method is explored via fractional steps.•A MATLAB program based on VFIFE-LES turbulence model is developed.•Theoretical basis for the unified fluid-solid dynamics in VFIFE is provided.•The method is effective in improving the convergence and numerical oscillation. Vector form of intrinsic finite element (VFIFE) is a numerical method widely used in solid mechanics. However, it's hard to extend the VFIFE method to fluid mechanics since the traditional VFIFE method fails to reflect the analytical equilibrium of multiple variables in the continuum. Therefore, under the framework of analytical mechanics, this paper proposes Lagrange's equation of the second kind in fluid mechanics with the extremum condition of Lagrange power functional. And a vectorized motion equation of incompressible viscous fluids is deduced from Lagrange's equation. By using several efficient algorithms in the finite difference method (FDM) and the finite element method (FEM), the NS equation is decomposed into four governing equations of vector form for fluid mechanics. In addition, with the application of the classic Smagorinsky sub-grid scale model in large eddy simulation (LES), this paper puts forward turbulence modelling with VFIFE procedure, and a corresponding MATLAB program is developed. Two typical examples are given to demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed large eddy simulation with VFIFE method. The proposed algorithm can effectively eliminate the non-physical oscillation of the pressure, and obtain much accurate results with a small number of grids.