A novel characteristic variational multiscale FEM for incompressible natural convection problem with variable density

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method to solve the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density. The main novel ideas of this work are to overcome the stability issue due to the nonlinear inertial term and the hyperbolic term for conventional finite element methods and to deal with high Rayleigh number for the natural convection problem. Design/methodology/approach The paper introduces a novel characteristic variational multiscale (C-VMS) finite element method which combines advantages of both the characteristic and variational multiscale methods within a variational framework for solving the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density. The authors chose the conforming finite element pair (P2, P2, P1, P2) to approximate the density, velocity, pressure and temperature field. Findings The paper gives the stability analysis of the C-VMS method. Extensive two-dimensional/three-dimensional numerical tests demonstrated that the C-VMS method not only can deal with the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density but also with high Rayleigh number very well. Originality/value Extensive 2D/3D numerical tests demonstrated that the C-VMS method not only can deal with the incompressible natural convection problem with variable density but also with high Rayleigh number very well.