This article studies the structure and its evolution of incompressible flows with the anti-symmetry using a combination of rigorous analysis and numerical simulations, with an application to an example of oceanic flow. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for 2D divergence-free vector fields with anti-symmetry are obtained, and a detailed numerical simulation for a simplified model of Marsigli oceanic flow is provided to explore and verify the structure and its transitions of the flow. It is expected that the study will lead to useful insights to the understanding of the flow dynamics from both the mathematical and physical points of view.

he incompressibility constraint makes Navier-Stokes equations difficult. A reformulation to a better posed problem is needed before solving it numerically. The sequential regularization method (SRM) is a reformulation which combines the penalty method with a stabilization method in the context of constrained dynamical systems and has the benefit of both methods. In the paper, we study the existence and uniqueness for the solution of the SRM and provide a simple proof of the convergence of the solution of the SRM to the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. We also give error estimates for the time discretized SRM formulation.

In a previous work [P. Crispel, P. Degond, and M.-H. Vignal, J. Comput. Phys., 223 (2007), pp. 208–234], a new numerical discretization of the Euler–Poisson system was proposed. This scheme is “asymptotic preserving” in the quasineutral limit (i.e., when the Debye length $\varepsilon$ tends to zero), which means that it becomes consistent with the limit model when $\varepsilon \to 0$. In the present work, we show that the stability domain of the present scheme is independent of $\varepsilon$. This stability analysis is performed on the Fourier transformed (with respect to the space variable) linearized system. We show that the stability property is more robust when a space-decentered scheme is used (which brings in some numerical dissipation) rather than a space-centered scheme. The linearization is first performed about a zero mean velocity and then about a nonzero mean velocity. At the various stages of the analysis, our scheme is compared with more classical schemes and its improved stability property is outlined. The analysis of a fully discrete (in space and time) version of the scheme is also given. Finally, some considerations about a model nonlinear problem, the Burgers–Poisson problem, are also discussed.

The sequential regularization method is a reformulation of the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations from the viewpoint of constrained dynamical systems or the approximate Helmholtz–Hodge projection. In this paper we study the long time behavior of the sequential regularization formulation. We give a uniform-in-time estimate between the solution of the reformulated system and that of the Navier–Stokes equations. We also conduct an error analysis for the temporal discrete system and show that the error bound is independent of time. A couple of long time flow examples are computed to demonstrate this method.

A fourth-order finite difference method is proposed and studied for the primitive equations (PEs) of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic flow based on mean vorticity formulation. Since the vertical average of the horizontal velocity field is divergence-free, we can introduce mean vorticity and mean stream function which are connected by a 2-D Poisson equation. As a result, the PEs can be reformulated such that the prognostic equation for the horizontal velocity is replaced by evolutionary equa-tions for the mean vorticity field and the vertical derivative of the horizontal velocity. The mean vorticity equation is approximated by a compact difference scheme due to the difficulty of the mean vorticity boundary condition, while fourth-order long-stencil approximations are utilized to deal with transport type equations for computational convenience. The numerical values for the total velocity field (both horizontal and vertical) are statically determined by a discrete realization of a differential equation at each fixed horizontal point. The method is highly efficient and is capable of produc-ing highly resolved solutions at a reasonable computational cost. The full fourth-order accuracy is checked by an example of the reformulated PEs with force terms. Addi-tionally, numerical results of a large-scale oceanic circulation are presented.