Recent developments in the pure streamfunction formulation of the Navier-Stokes system

In this paper we review fourth-order approximations of the biharmonic operator in one, two and three dimensions. In addition, we describe recent developments on second and fourth order finite difference approximations of the two dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The schemes are compact both for the biharmonic and the Laplacian operators. For the convective term the fourth order scheme invokes also a sixth order Pade approximation for the first order derivatives, using an approximation suggested by Carpenter-Gottlieb-Abarbanel (J. Comput. Phys. 108:272-295, 1993). We also introduce the derivation of a pure streamfunction formulation for the Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions.