An entropy-stable and kinetic energy-preserving macro-element HDG method for compressible flows

TL;DR

This paper presents a high order macro-element HDG method for compressible flows that is scalable, entropy-stable, and energy-preserving, enabling efficient and robust simulations including turbulent regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a macro-element HDG framework with entropy stability and kinetic energy preservation, improving efficiency and robustness over standard methods.

Findings

Achieves up to tenfold speedup compared to standard HDG methods.

Maintains optimal accuracy in benchmark tests.

Demonstrates robustness in turbulent flow simulations.

Abstract

This paper introduces a high order numerical framework for efficient and robust simulation of compressible flows. To address the inefficiencies of standard hybridized discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) methods in large scale settings, we develop a macro element HDG method that reduces global and local degrees of freedom by embedding continuous Galerkin structure within macro-elements. This formulation supports matrix free implementations and enables highly parallel local solves, leading to substantial performance gains and excellent scalability on modern architectures. To enhance robustness in under resolved or turbulent regimes, we extend the method using entropy variables and a flux differencing approach to construct entropy stable and kinetic energy preserving variants. These formulations satisfy a discrete entropy inequality and improve stability without compromising high order accuracy. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method on benchmark problems including the inviscid isentropic vortex and the Taylor Green vortex in both inviscid and turbulent regimes. Numerical results confirm optimal accuracy, improved robustness, and up to an order of magnitude speedup over standard HDG methods. These developments mark a significant advancement in high order methods for direct numerical simulation (DNS) of compressible flows.