Semi-Godunov schemes for multiphase flows in porous media (Q1030794)

The authors describe a class of finite volume schemes for approximating solutions to systems of conservation laws. These schemes are based on a local decomposition of the \(2\times2\) system into a series of scalar equations but with discontinuous coefficients. The resulting schemes are based on using Godunov-type solvers to approximate conservation laws with variable coefficients. The schemes are based on either aligning the discretizations of both unknowns or on staggering them. The resulting schemes do not use any characteristic information about the full system and are hence easy to implement. A good example of interesting systems where these schemes perform very well are three phase flows in a porous medium. In the absence of gravity and some other general assumptions, the authors show that the aligned version of the scheme coincides with the standard upwind scheme and the staggered scheme is a perturbation of it. Hence, these schemes can be thought of as extensions of upwind schemes to flows with gravity even though they do not explicit compute eigenvalues of the full system. The performance of these schemes is illustrated on a variety of numerical experiments for linear hyperbolic systems and multiphase flows without and with gravity. For linear systems, the aligned scheme works very well as long as the signs of the eigenvalues of the full system and the signs of the diagonal entries of the flux Jacobian are similar and resolves the solutions of the linear systems with high degree of accuracy. The staggered version of the scheme can be slightly more diffusive and can give over/under shoots but its performance can be improved by using either a Runge-Kutta time discretization or a Picard-type iterative scheme. Furthermore, the staggered scheme is very robust and works in situations where the aligned scheme may become unstable. Regarding three phase flows, several numerical experiments are conducted without and with gravity illustrating that both the aligned and the staggered schemes work quite well and resolve the complex flow patterns to good accuracy. Comparing the two schemes, i.e., the aligned and the staggered schemes, it can be seen from the numerical experiments that, in some problems, the aligned scheme is less diffusive than staggered scheme. Yet, the aligned scheme does not work for linear systems when the signs of the eigenvalues are different from that of the diagonal entries of the Jacobian. On three-phase flows with gravity, the aligned scheme is difficult to implement on account of the complicated flux shapes. On the other hand, the staggered scheme is robust and is easier to implement. It can give small under/overshoots at shocks but these are removed when one uses the staggered scheme with either the Runge- Kutta or the Picard type iterative discretizations. The authors mention that it is very easy to extend these schemes to the case of heterogeneous media, to higher order by following standard ENO/WENO or DG reconstructions and to general \(n \times n \) systems of conservation.