Projection method

Summary

The projection method is a time-stepping scheme for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Each step first advances the velocity without the pressure and then projects it onto divergence-free fields, which produces the pressure as a by-product. The projection is the discrete form of the Helmholtz decomposition and costs one Poisson solve per step. It was introduced by Alexandre Chorin, and independently by Roger Temam, and it is one of the standard methods of computational fluid dynamics. It is a different method from the projection method for integral equations.