The influence of cell geometry on the Godunov scheme applied to the linear wave equation (Q982989)

The linear wave equation, subject to periodic boundary conditions, is discretized with Godunov type schemes. The resulting system is studied in the low Mach region, and it is shown that the behavior of the solution deeply depends on the spatial dimension as well as on the mesh type. The authors prove that the Godunov scheme is accurate on a triangular, tetrahedral and one-dimensional Cartesian mesh, but that it contains spurious modes on a 2D or 3D Cartesian mesh. It is also shown that by centering the discretization of the pressure gradient, creating a so called low Mach Godunov scheme, the scheme is accurate on all the above mentioned meshes. The Hilbert space for the solutions to the linear wave equation is decomposed into two orthogonal sub-spaces by means of a Hodge decomposition. One of the subspaces is identified as the incompressible subspace, and the other one as the acoustic subspace. By creating discrete versions of the subspaces, it is demonstrated that the Godunov scheme on a 2D mesh creates spurious modes.