A novel second-order flux splitting for ideal magnetohydrodynamics

A new flux splitting scheme based on wave-particle behaviour is developed for one-dimensional ideal magnetohydrodynamics. We exploit the idea that while ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations are non-convex with non-homogeneous fluxes as opposed to their hydrodynamic counterparts, they exhibit an overall wave-like structure. The proposed approach splits the flux vector into three distinct parts: the particle-like transport part and the wave-like pressure and magnetic parts, with the latter vanishing for pure hydrodynamics. The pressure part of the fluxes satisfy homogeneity property and the split flux Jacobians are constructed with a provision to regulate the numerical dissipation. The magnetic part of the fluxes however is non-homogeneous and is treated using a central scheme with artificial viscosity. This disparate treatment of the individual components of the total flux vector results in a scheme with a central-upwind character that can be implemented with low computational effort. Referred to as Magneto-acoustic Wave Particle Splitting (MWPS) scheme, it is extended to second-order accuracy by using slope limiters incorporated through the solution-dependent weighted least squares approach for gradient calculations. Several one-dimensional MHD problems are numerically solved to highlight the accuracy, positivity preservation and robustness of the MWPS scheme and comparative studies show that MWPS performs at least as well as the Advection Upstream Splitting Method (AUSM) and even outperforms it for some test cases.