A central WENO scheme for solving hyperbolic conservation laws on non-uniform meshes

This paper proposes a new WENO procedure to compute multi-scale problems with embedded discontinuities, on nonuniform meshes. In a one-dimensional context, the WENO procedure is first defined on a five-points stencil and designed to be fifth-order accurate in regions of smoothness. To this end, we define a finite-volume discretization in which we consider the cell averages of the variable as the discrete unknowns. The reconstruction of their point-values is then ensured by a unique fifth-order polynomial. This optimum polynomial is considered as a symmetric and convex combination, by ideal weights, of four quadratic polynomials. The symmetric nature of the resulting interpolation has an important consequence: the choice of ideal weights has no influence on the accuracy of the discretization. This advantage enables to formulate the interpolation for non-uniform meshes. Following the methodology of the classic WENO procedure, non-oscillatory weights are then calculated from the ideal weights. We adapt this procedure for the non-linear weights to maintain the theoretical convergence properties of the optimum reconstruction, whatever the problem considered. The resulting scheme is a fifth-order WENO method based on central interpolation and TVD Runge-Kutta time-integration. We call this scheme the CWENO5 scheme. Numerical experiments in the scalar and the 1D Euler cases make it possible to check and to validate the options selected. In those experiments, we emphasize the resolution power of the method by computing test cases that model realistic aero-acoustic problems. Finally, the new algorithm is directly extended to bi-dimensional problems. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.