A study on temporal accuracy of OpenFOAM

Crank-Nicolson scheme in native OpenFOAM source libraries was not able to provide 2nd order temporal accuracy of velocity and pressure since the volume flux of convective nonlinear terms was 1st accurate in time. In the present study the simplest way of getting the volume flux with 2nd order accuracy was proposed by using old fluxes. A possible numerical instability originated from an explicit estimation of volume fluxes could be handled by introducing a weighting factor which was determined by observing the ratio of the finally corrected volume flux to the intermediate volume flux at the previous step. The new calculation of volume fluxes was able to provide temporally accurate velocity and pressure with 2nd order. The improvement of temporal accuracy was validated by performing numerical simulations of 2D Taylor-Green vortex of which an exact solution was known and 2D vortex shedding from a circular cylinder.