An Efficient IMEX-SDIRK2 mr-ccSAV Scheme for the Forced Navier--Stokes Equations with Uniform-in-Time Enstrophy Bounds

Abstract

We propose and analyze an IMEX-SDIRK2 mean-reverting concurrent-correction scalar auxiliary variable (mr-ccSAV) method for the forced two-dimensional periodic Navier--Stokes equations in vorticity form. The viscous term is treated by Alexander's SDIRK2 method and advection explicitly. Each stage requires two elliptic solves with the same shifted Laplacian and the solution of either a cubic or a linear scalar algebraic equation. For initial vorticity in $\dot L^s(Ω)$, $s>2$, a stage solution exists for every positive time step; uniqueness is established separately under an explicit small-step condition. The principal result is a direct, unconditional uniform-in-time enstrophy bound for arbitrary positive time steps. For persistently bounded forcing, this estimate is absorbing: the influence of the initial data decays, and the forcing contribution does not accumulate in time. Under additional regularity, uniformly bounded step sizes, and bounded neighboring step ratios, we also establish uniform-in-time $H^1$ and $H^2$ vorticity bounds without a small-step condition. For smooth solutions, the method converges optimally at second order. Numerical experiments confirm its accuracy, long-time robustness, and effectiveness of a companion embedded time-step selector.