Towards efficient tracking of inertial particles with high-order multidomain methods

This paper develops an efficient particle tracking algorithm to be used in fluid simulations approximated by a high-order multidomain discretization of the Navier–Stokes equations. We discuss how to locate a particle's host subdomain, how to interpolate the flow field to its location, and how to integrate its motion in time. A search algorithm for the nearest subdomain and quadrature point, tuned to a typical quadrilateral isoparametric spectral subdomain, takes advantage of the inverse of the linear blending equation. We show that to compute particle-laden flows, a sixth-order Lagrangian polynomial that uses points solely within a subdomain is sufficiently accurate to interpolate the carrier phase variables to the particle position. Time integration of particles with a lower-order Adams–Bashforth scheme, rather than the fourth-order Runge–Kutta scheme often used for the integration of the carrier phase, increases computational efficiency while maintaining engineering accuracy. We verify the tracking algorithm with numerical tests on a steady channel flow and an unsteady backward-facing step flow.