Development of a multiscale finite element method for incompressible flows in heterogeneous media

Overview & Synopsis

The nuclear reactor core is a highly heterogeneous medium crowded with numerous solid obstacles and macroscopic thermohydraulic phenomena are directly affected by localized phenomena. However, modern computing resources are not powerful enough to carry out direct numerical simulations of the full core with the desired accuracy. This thesis is devoted to the development of Multiscale Finite Element Methods (MsFEMs) to simulate incompressible flows in heterogeneous media with reasonable computational costs. Navier-Stokes equations are approximated on the coarse mesh by a stabilized Galerkin method, where basis functions are solutions of local problems on fine meshes by taking precisely local geometries into account. Local problems are defined by Stokes or Oseen equations with appropriate boundary conditions and source terms. We propose several methods to improve the accuracy of MsFEMs, by enriching the approximation space of basis functions. In particular, we propose high-order MsFEMs where boundary conditions and source terms are chosen in spaces of polynomials whose degrees can vary. Numerical simulations show that high-order MsFEMs improve significantly the accuracy of the solution. A multiscale simulation chain is constructed to simulate successfully flows in two- and three-dimensional heterogeneous media.