A massively parallel multi-block hybrid compact-WENO scheme for compressible flows

A new multi-block hybrid compact-WENO finite-difference method for the massively parallel computation of compressible flows is presented. In contrast to earlier methods, our approach breaks the global dependence of compact methods by using explicit finite-difference methods at block interfaces and is fully conservative. The resulting method is fifth and sixth-order accurate for the convective and diffusive fluxes, respectively. The impact of the explicit interface treatment on the stability and accuracy of the multi-block method is quantified for the advection and diffusion equations. Numerical errors increase slightly as the number of blocks is increased. It is also found that the maximum allowable time steps increase with the number of blocks. The method demonstrates excellent scalability on up to 1264 processors. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.