A Comparative Study on Evaluation Methods of Fluid Forces on Cartesian Grids

We investigate the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the numerical schemes for evaluating fluid forces in Cartesian grid systems. A comparison is made between two different types of schemes, namely, polygon-based methods and mesh-based methods, which differ in the discretization of the surface of the object. The present assessment is intended to investigate the effects of the Reynolds number, the object motion, and the complexity of the object surface. The results show that the mesh-based methods work as well as the polygon-based methods, even if the object surface is discretized in a staircase manner. In addition, the results also show that the accuracy of the mesh-based methods is strongly dependent on the evaluation of shear stresses, and thus they must be evaluated by using a reliable method, such as the ghost-cell or ghost-fluid method.