Analytic investigation of the compatibility condition and the initial evolution of a smooth velocity field for the Navier–Stokes equation in a channel configuration

Abstract

Abstract A partial differential equation has usually a regular solution at the initial time if the initial condition is smooth in space, fulfills the governing equations and is compatible with the boundary condition. In the case of the Navier–Stokes equation, the initial velocity field must also be divergence–free. It is common belief that the initial condition is compatible with the boundary condition if the initial condition fulfills the boundary condition but this is not sufficient. Such a field does not necessarily fulfill the full compatibility condition of the Navier–Stokes equation. If the condition is violated, the solution is not regular at the initial time ( t = 0 + ). This issue has been known for a while but not in the full breadth of the engineering fluid dynamics community. In this paper, a practical calculation method is presented for checking the compatibility condition. Furthermore, a smooth initial condition is presented in a periodic channel flow that violates the compatibility condition and has therefore no smooth solution at the initial instant. The calculations were performed in an analytical framework. The results for a channel configuration show that in the absence of wall–normal velocity the condition is always fulfilled and the problem has a regular solution. If the wall–normal velocity component is non-zero, the condition is usually not fulfilled but exceptional cases, fulfilling the compatibility condition can be generated with optimization methods. The generation procedure of such a field is useful to provide correct initial conditions for such time-dependent numerical flow simulations, where the very first instances are important from an engineering point of view. The presented methods can provide insight about the applicability of the chosen initial conditions.