CALCULATION OF CONVECTIVE FLOW ON THE PERSONAL COMPUTER USING A MODIFIED FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD

A modified finite-element method is used to simulate convective flow of an incompressible fluid in two dimensions. The time-dependent governing equations are solved explicitly using equal-order basis functions for the unknown variables, mass lumping, and one-paint quadrature. Petrov-Galerkin weighting is applied to the advection terms. Global assembly and storage of the coefficient matrices are replaced by local assembly. Although spatial accuracy is O(h 2 ) for simply shaped elements, results are accurate for steady-state conditions. The method is cost effective and easy to implement. Problems requiring several thousand nodes can be run on a personal computer