Gas-kinetic scheme with discontinuous derivative for low speed flow computation

The present paper concerns the improvement of the gas-kinetic scheme (GKS) for low speed flow computation. In the modified GKS scheme, the flow distributions with discontinuous derivatives are used as an initial condition at the cell interface for the flux evaluation. This discontinuity is determined by considering both the flow characteristic and grid’s resolution. Compared with GKS method with a continuous slope for the flow variables at a cell interface, the new scheme is more robust and accurate. In the under resolved flow computation, the new scheme presents much less numerical oscillation. The extension of the current scheme to unstructured mesh is straightforward. To validate the method, both computations of 2D lid-driven cavity flow and 3D flow past a sphere are performed. The numerical results validate the current method.