Boundary element analysis of viscous flow by penalty function formulation

This paper presents a boundary element formulation employing the penalty function technique for steady viscous flow problems. By regarding the convective terms in Navier-Stokes equations as body forces in elastostatics, the standard elastostatics analysis can be extended to solve viscous flow problems. In particular, several investigations were carried out for evaluating the convective terms. These include a finite difference scheme (employing both upwind and central approximations) and a boundary integral formulation. Finally, some numerical results are shown in order to demonstrate the validity of the present method and its accuracy in the evaluation of convective terms.