Upwind embedded boundary SBP operators: New high order numerical schemes for arbitrarily shaped domains with Cartesian grids

Abstract

Embedded boundary summation by parts (SBP) methods define finite differencing based derivative operators with the added feature that the boundary need not coincide with a grid cell, allowing a boundary to be embedded on a regular Cartesian grid. This is achieved by the introduction of interpolation/extrapolation operators that match the accuracy of the boundary closure. These methods have been used to perform black hole excision simulations on a domain with a spherical boundary embedded in a regular Cartesian grid, demonstrating their usefulness for nonlinear problems. In this work, new operators are derived using this embedded boundary framework to increase the order of accuracy of the interior and boundary closure while minimizing the boundary error. Additionally, these novel operators improve the spectral properties on the grid by generalizing to an upwind scheme that has better dispersion relation preserving properties compared to traditional SBP schemes for wave equations. These operators are tested with the curvilinear scalar wave equation on a 3D multiblock grid with an excision sphere embedded in the center block to demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of these novel embedded operators.