Numerical Investigation of Incompressible Fluid Flow in Planar Branching Channels

The problem of numerical solution of the viscous incompressible fluid flows in branching (bifurcating) channels is addressed using different discretization techniques. The methods are briefly described, pointing out the main differences in their behavior and numerical implementation on different types of grids. The newly developed finite difference immersed boundary code is compared with two in-house and open-source finite volume methods. The mutual comparison of the predictions from all methods is presented for the case of channel with an oblique branch inclined at different angle. The aim of the paper is to show that the very simple finite difference method implemented on Cartesian grid can provide results that are comparable with those obtained by the presented finite volume methods on structured, wall-aligned grids.