FLIP MHD - A particle-in-cell method for magnetohydrodynamics

The fluid-implicit-particle, or 'FLIP' method presently extended to 2D and 3D MHD flow incorporates a Lagrangian field representation and yields a grid magnetic Reynolds number of up to 16 while preserving contact continuities that retain the Galilean invariance of the MHD flow equations. Analytical arguments and numerical examples demonstrate the conservation of mass, momentum, magnetic flux, and energy; 2D calculation results for the illustrative cases of contact discontinuity convection, Rayleigh-Taylor unstable flow.