A low-Mach number method for the numerical simulation of complex flows

Abstract A new numerical procedure which considers a modification to the artificial acoustic stiffness correction method (AASCM) is here presented, to perform simulations of low Mach number flows with the compressible Navier–Stokes equations. An extra term is added to the energy fluxes instead of using an energy source correction term as in the original model. This new scheme re-scales the speed of sound to values similar to the flow velocity, enabling the use of larger time steps and leading to a more stable numerical method. The new method is validated performing Large Eddy Simulations on test problems. The effect of a crucial numerical parameter alpha is evaluated as well as the robustness of the method to variations of the Mach number. Numerical results are compared to the existing experimental data showing that the new method achieves good agreement increasing the time-step, and therefore accelerating the computation for low-Mach convective flows.