An immersed boundary method with formal second-order accuracy and reduced numerical viscosity

A formally second-order accurate immersed boundary method is presented and tested in this paper. We apply this new scheme to simulate the flow past a circular cylinder and study the effect of numerical viscosity on the accuracy of the computation by comparing the numerical results with those of a first-order method. The numerical evidence shows that the new scheme has less numerical viscosity and is therefore a better choice for the simulation of high Reynolds number flows with immersed boundaries. (C) 2000 Academic Press.