Numerical Diffusion - Explanation

Explanation

In Eulerian simulations, time and space are divided into a discrete grid and the continuous differential equations of motion (such as the Navier–Stokes equation) are discretized into finite-difference equations. The discrete equations are in general more diffusive than the original differential equations, so that the simulated system behaves differently than the intended physical system. The amount and character of the difference depends on the system being simulated and the type of discretization that is used. Most fluid dynamics or magnetohydrodynamic simulations seek to reduce numerical diffusion to the minimum possible, to achieve high fidelity — but under certain circumstances diffusion is added deliberately into the system to avoid singularities. For example, shock waves in fluids and current sheets in plasmas are in some approximations infinitely thin; this can cause difficulty for numerical codes. A simple way to avoid the difficulty is to add diffusion that smooths out the shock or current sheet. Higher order numerical methods (including spectral methods) tend to have less numerical diffusion than low order methods.