Predicted Air Flow Around Objects Using the Discrete Vortex Method

The Lagrangian grid-free numerical method, the discrete vortex method, was applied to solve the Navier-Stokes euqations. This method avoids the introduction of numerical viscosity swamping the real physical viscosity at high Reynolds number, unlike Eulerian method, e.g. finite difference and element methods. The boundary integral equation method for the potential flow solution was included to make the discrete vortex method more feasible for complex geometries. The fast adaptive multipole expansion method was incorporated to reduce the computational time from $O(N^2)$ to O(N) for the computations of vortex-vortex interactions. The test problems were air flow around one circular cylinder and two circular cylinders in tandem with various gaps. The numerical results were in excellent gareement with the experimental and other computational results. The applicabilty of the method was discussed with the indoor and the outdoor air pollution problems, especially the contaminant transport in the recirculation regions.