Quantification of numerical diffusivity due to TVD schemes in the advection equation

In this study, the numerical diffusivity νnumνnum inherent to the Roe–MUSCL scheme has been quantified for the scalar advection equation. The Roe–MUSCL scheme employed is a combination of: (1) the standard extension of the original Roeʼs formulation to the advection equation, and (2) van Leerʼs Monotone Upwind Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) technique that applies a linear variable reconstruction in a cell along with a scaled limiter function. An explicit expression is derived for the numerical diffusivity in terms of the limiter function, the distance between the cell centers on either side of a face, and the face-normal velocity. The numerical diffusivity formulation shows that a scaled limiter function is more appropriate for MUSCL in order to consistently recover the central-differenced flux at the maximum value of the limiter. The significance of the scaling factor is revealed when the Roe–MUSCL scheme, originally developed for 1-D scenarios, is applied to 2-D scalar advection problems. It is seen that without the scaling factor, the MUSCL scheme may not necessarily be monotonic in multi-dimensional scenarios. Numerical diffusivities of the minmod, superbee, van Leer and Barth–Jesperson TVD limiters were quantified for four problems: 1-D advection of a step function profile, and 2-D advection of step, sinusoidal, and double-step profiles. For all the cases, it is shown that the superbee scheme provides the lowest numerical diffusivity that is also most confined to the vicinity of the discontinuity. The minmod scheme is the most diffusive, as well as active in regions away from high gradients. As expected, the grid resolution study demonstrates that the magnitude and the spatial extent of the numerical diffusivity decrease with increasing resolution.