Numerical modeling of transport barrier formation (Q2269853)

In diverse media the characteristics of mass and heat transfer may undergo spontaneous and abrupt changes in time and space. This can lead to the formation of regions with strongly reduced transport, so-called transport barriers (TB). The presence of interfaces between regions with qualitatively and quantitatively different transport characteristics impose severe requirements to the methods and numerical schemes used solving transport equations. In particular the assumptions made in standard methods about the solution behavior by representing its derivatives fail in points where the transport changes abruptly. The situation is complicated further by the fact that neither the formation time nor the position of interfaces are known a priori. A numerical approach, operating reliably under such conditions, is proposed. It is based on the introduction of a new dependent variable related to the variation after one time step of the original one integrated over the volume. In contrary to the original variable, the new one has the first spatial derivative continuous everywhere, even if the transport characteristics are discontinuous. In the vicinity of any grid knot the resulting differential equation of the new variable is approximated by a second order ordinary differential equation with constant coefficients. Exact analytical solutions of these equations are conjugated between knots by demanding the continuity of the total solution and its first derivative. As an example the heat transfer in media with heat conductivity decreasing abruptly when the temperature e-folding length exceeds a critical value is considered. The formation of TB both at a heating power above the critical level and at a power under subcritical heating due to radiation energy losses non-linearly dependent on the temperature is modeled.