Bound-Preserving Reconstruction of Tensor Quantities for Remap in ALE Fluid Dynamics

We analyze several new and existing approaches for limiting tensor quantities in the context of deviatoric stress remapping in an ALE numerical simulation of elastic flow. Remapping and limiting of the tensor component-by-component are shown to violate radial symmetry of derived variables such as elastic energy or force. Therefore, we have extended the symmetry-preserving Vector Image Polygon algorithm, originally designed for limiting vector variables. This limiter constrains the vector (in our case a vector of independent tensor components) within the convex hull formed by the vectors from surrounding cells—an equivalent of the discrete maximum principle in scalar variables. We compare this method with a limiter designed specifically for deviatoric stress limiting which aims to constrain the \(J_2\) invariant that is proportional to the specific elastic energy and scale the tensor accordingly. We also propose a method which involves remapping and limiting the \(J_2\) invariant independently using known scalar techniques. The deviatoric stress tensor is then scaled to match this remapped invariant, which guarantees conservation in terms of elastic energy.