A general positivity-preserving algorithm for implicit high-order finite volume schemes solving the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations

This paper presents a general positivity-preserving algorithm for implicit high-order finite volume schemes that solve compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations to ensure the positivity of density and internal energy (or pressure). Previous positivity-preserving algorithms are mainly based on the slope limiting or flux limiting technique, which rely on the existence of low-order positivity-preserving schemes. This dependency poses serious restrictions on extending these algorithms to temporally implicit schemes since it is difficult to know if a low-order implicit scheme is positivity-preserving. In the present paper, a new positivity-preserving algorithm is proposed in terms of the flux correction technique. And the factors of the flux correction are determined by a residual correction procedure. For a finite volume scheme that is capable of achieving a converged solution, we show that the correction factors are in the order of unity with additional high-order terms corresponding to the spatial and temporal rates of convergence. Therefore, the proposed positivity-preserving algorithm is accuracy-reserving and asymptotically consistent. The notable advantage of this method is that it does not rely on the existence of low-order positivity-preserving baseline schemes. Therefore, it can be applied to the implicit schemes solving Euler and especially Navier-Stokes equations. In the present paper, the proposed technique is applied to an implicit dual time-stepping finite volume scheme with temporal second-order and spatial high-order accuracy. The present positivity-preserving algorithm is implemented in an iterative manner to ensure that the dual time-stepping iteration will converge to the positivity-preserving solution. Another similar correction technique is also proposed to ensure that the solution remains positivity-preserving at each sub-iteration. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm preserves positive density and pressure in all test cases and significantly improves the robustness of the numerical schemes.