Comparison of an adaptive wavelet method and nonlinearly filtered pseudo-spectral methods for two-dimensional turbulence
   
  Kai SCHNEIDER, Nicholas KEVLAHAN and Marie FARGE

K.S.: Institut für Chemische Technik, Universität Karlsruhe, Kaiserstrasse 12, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany;
and Centre de Physique Théorique, CNRS - Luminy, Case 907, 13288 Marseille cedex 09, France
N.K. & M.F.: LMD-CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, 24, rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France


Abstract An adaptive wavelet method for solving the two-dimensional Navier-Strokes equations is compared with nonlinear Fourier filtering and nonlinear wavelet filtering of the pseudospectral method at each time step. The methods are each applied to a highly nonlinear flow typical of two-dimensional turbulence, the merger of two positive vortices pushed together by a weaker negative vortex, and the results are compared with a reference classical pseudospectral method. Nonlinear Fourier filtering uses 1.7 times fewer active modes than the reference simulation at the time of merger (when the flow is most complicated) and retains the overall dynamics and structure of the flow. However, it induces spurious oscillations in the background. Nonlinear wavelet filtering simulation uses 9.2 times fewer modes than the reference simulation at the time of merger, and reduces the errors in the solution. The adaptative wavelet simulation replicate precisely the dynamics and spatial structure of the reference simulation while retaining the high compression rate of the nonlinear wavelet filtering simulation. In addition we observe that the number of active wavelet modes remains quasi-constant during the whole merging process, independent of the strength of the vorticity gradients. On the contrary, the number of active Fourier modes is multiplied by 5 when the vorticity gradients are strongest. The increased accuracy of the adaptive wavelet simulation is due to the security zone added around the active coefficients and to the compression of the nonlinear term of the Navier-Strokes equations in the wavelet basis. These results suggest that nonlinear Fourier filtering of a classical pseudospectral method cannot produce significant improvement, but that the adaptive wavelet method combines a consistently high compression rate with high accuracy.

 
Comparaison entre une méthode adaptative en ondelettes et un filtrage pseudo-spectral
non linéaire pour la turbulence bidimensionnelle
   
Résumé Cet article compare l'intégration des équations de Navier-Stokes bidimensionnelles dans une base d'ondelettes adaptative avec celle pseudo-spectrale filtrée à chaque pas de temps de façon non linéaire, pour l'étude de l'interaction fortement non linéaire de trois tourbillons.