Flux Limiter - How They Work

How They Work

The main idea behind the construction of flux limiter schemes is to limit the spatial derivatives to realistic values – for scientific and engineering problems this usually means physically realisable and meaningful values. They are used in high resolution schemes for solving problems described by PDEs and only come into operation when sharp wave fronts are present. For smoothly changing waves, the flux limiters do not operate and the spatial derivatives can be represented by higher order approximations without introducing spurious oscillations. Consider the 1D semi-discrete scheme below,

\frac{d u_i}{d t} + \frac{1}{\Delta x_i} \left[ F \left( u_{i + \frac{1}{2}} \right) - F \left( u_{i - \frac{1}{2}} \right) \right] =0,

where, and represent edge fluxes for the ith cell. If these edge fluxes can be represented by low and high resolution schemes, then a flux limiter can switch between these schemes depending upon the gradients close to the particular cell, as follows,

F \left( u_{i + \frac{1}{2}} \right) = f^{low}_{i + \frac{1}{2}} - \phi\left( r_i \right) \left( f^{low}_{i + \frac{1}{2}} - f^{high}_{i + \frac{1}{2}} \right),
F \left( u_{i - \frac{1}{2}} \right) = f^{low}_{i - \frac{1}{2}} - \phi\left( r_{i-1} \right) \left( f^{low}_{i - \frac{1}{2}} - f^{high}_{i - \frac{1}{2}} \right),

where

low precision, high resolution flux,
high precision, low resolution flux,
flux limiter function,

and represents the ratio of successive gradients on the solution mesh, i.e.,

.

The limiter function is constrained to be greater than or equal to zero, i.e., . Therefore, when the limiter is equal to zero (sharp gradient, opposite slopes or zero gradient), the flux is represented by a low resolution scheme. Similarly, when the limiter is equal to 1 (smooth solution), it is represented by a high resolution scheme. The various limiters have differing switching characteristics and are selected according to the particular problem and solution scheme. No particular limiter has been found to work well for all problems, and a particular choice is usually made on a trial and error basis.

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