On Boundary Conditions for Incompressible Navier-Stokes Problems

Abstract

We revisit the issue of finding proper boundary conditions for the field equations describing incompressible flow problems, for quantities like pressure or vorticity, which often do not have immediately obvious “physical” boundary conditions. Most of the issues are discussed for the example of a primitive-variables formulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the form of momentum equations plus the pressure Poisson equation. However, analogous problems also exist in other formulations, some of which are briefly reviewed as well. This review article cites 95 references.