Periodic boundary conditions on staggered grids: Uniqueness of variables at cell edges/faces

Abstract

Periodic boundary conditions when applied to staggered grids, which define variables on both cell edges and cell centers, can be shown to have a problem with uniqueness of variables at cell edges depending on the number of points in the direction of periodicity. In the context of the grid defined in this work, it can be shown that uniqueness is guaranteed if and only if the number of points in the periodic direction are odd. This stems from the rank of the matrix with dimensions (N-2) x (N-2) that transforms the values at cell centers to values at edges. This matrix is full rank if and only if N is odd. Here, N is the number of points describing the cell edges.