An implicit kinetic inviscid flux for predicting continuum flows in all speed regimes

In this study, the kinetic inviscid flux (KIF) is improved and coupled with an implicit strategy. The KIF is a recently proposed numerical method, which is a dynamic combination of the kinetic flux vector splitting (KFVS) method and the totally thermalized transport (TTT) method. The inherent microscopic mechanism of the KFVS makes the KIF good at solving shock waves and avoiding the numerical shock instability phenomenon. When developing the implicit KIF, it is noticed that, in boundary layers, the KFVS part of the KIF not only reduces the accuracy but also seriously reduces the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) number. As a result, a new weight is proposed in this paper to combine the KFVS method with the TTT method properly. Besides admitting the use of larger CFL numbers, this new weight also contributes to more accurate numerical results like pressure, friction coefficient, and heat flux when solving shock waves, boundary layers, and complex supersonic/hypersonic flows. To examine the validity, accuracy, and efficiency of the proposed method, six numerical test cases covering the whole speed regime are conducted, including the hypersonic viscous flow past a cylinder, the hypersonic double-cone flow, the hypersonic double-ellipsoid flow, the laminar shock-boundary layer interaction, the supersonic flow around a ramp segment and the subsonic lid-driven cavity flow.