A locally implicit method for fluid flow problems

The fluid flow inside the space shuttle main engine (SSME) traverses through a complex geometrical configuration. The flow is compressible, viscous, and turbulent with pockets of separated regions. Several computer codes are being developed to solve three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations with different turbulence models for analyzing the SSME internal flow. The locally implicit scheme is a computationally efficient scheme which converges rapidly in multi-grid modes for elliptic problems. It has the promise of providing a rapidly converging algorithm for steady-state viscous flow problems.