High-Resolution Numerical Simulation Of Shock Waves

NASA technical memorandum compares results of upwind and symmetric shock-capturing methods in numerical simulation of gas-dynamic flows. Both methods find shocks as sharp variations in fluid properties over few grid points. Methods differ in type of artificial viscosity introduced to stabilize computations. Symmetric method shown as accurate as upwind method, but with fewer and simpler time steps in transient case or fewer iteration steps in steady-state case.