A new Green–Gauss reconstruction on unstructured meshes. Part I: Gradient reconstruction

We describe a new and simple strategy based on the Gauss divergence theorem for obtaining centroidal gradients on unstructured meshes. Unlike the standard Green–Gauss (SGG) reconstruction which requires face values of quantities whose gradients are sought, the proposed approach reconstructs the gradients using the normal derivative(s) at the faces. The new strategy, referred to as the Modified Green–Gauss (MGG) reconstruction results in consistent gradients which are at least first-order accurate on arbitrary polygonal meshes. We show that the MGG reconstruction is linearity preserving independent of the mesh topology and retains the consistent behaviour of gradients even on meshes with large curvature and high aspect ratios. The gradient accuracy in MGG reconstruction depends on the accuracy of discretisation of the normal derivatives at faces and this necessitates an iterative approach for gradient computation on non-orthogonal meshes. Numerical studies on different mesh topologies demonstrate that MGG reconstruction gives accurate and consistent gradients on non-orthogonal meshes, with the number of iterations proportional to the extent of non-orthogonality. The MGG reconstruction is found to be consistent even on meshes with large aspect ratio and curvature with the errors being lesser than those from linear least-squares reconstruction. A non-iterative strategy in conjunction with MGG reconstruction is proposed for gradient computations in finite volume simulations that achieves the accuracy and robustness of MGG reconstruction at a cost equivalent to that of SGG reconstruction. The efficacy of this strategy for fluid flow problems is demonstrated through numerical investigations in both incompressible and compressible regimes. The MGG reconstruction may, therefore, be viewed as a novel and promising blend of least-squares and Green–Gauss based approaches which can be implemented with little effort in open-source finite-volume solvers and legacy codes.