4 CHAPTER 1. BASICS
It vanishes, of course, because the parallelepiped becomes flat in that case and the volume ( = the scalar triple product)
becomes zero. I now tell you why I really like the scalar triple product. I like it because the volume V of a tetrahedron
formed by the three vectors, a, b, and c, is given by
V =
1
6
|a · (b × c)|, (1.2.20)
and a tetrahedron is one of my favorite computational cells in CFD. Note that the vectors a, b, and c are the edge
vectors centered at a common vertex of the tetrahedron. The volume is defined with the absolute value of the scalar
triple product to keep it positive in case any of the vectors points the opposite direction. Of course, then, it is easy to
understand that the scalar triple product does not change at all under rotation of coordinate system:
a · (b × c) = a
′
· (b
′
× c
′
), (1.2.21)
where a
′
, b
′
, and c
′
are the vectors rotated by a rotation matrix R,
a
′
= Ra, b
′
= Rb, c
′
= Rc. (1.2.22)
This is natural because rotating a parallelepiped (or a tetrahedron) does not change its volume.
1.2.6 Vector Triple Product
Of course, there is a vector triple product. The vector triple product is defined by
a × (b × c). (1.2.23)
The following formula is known as Lagrange’s formula or vector product expansion:
a × (b × c) = b(a · c) − c(a · b). (1.2.24)
It is known also as the BAC-CAB identity. That is useful for memorizing the formula. But that’s not the reason that I
like the vector triple product. I like it because it is useful in CFD. To see how useful it is, consider the dot product of
the vector triple product and a:
[a × (b × c)] · a = 0. (1.2.25)
Yes, it is zero because it is a scalar triple product with two identical vectors: a, b ×c, and a. It means that the vector
triple product of a, b, and c is perpendicular to a. That is interesting. In CFD, we sometimes need to find vectors
tangent to a face of a computational cell from the face normal vector, or more generally, find a vector perpendicular to
a given vector. For example, the situation arises in the rotated-hybrid Riemann solvers [112]. Usually in finite-volume
methods, a single numerical flux is computed in the direction normal to the face,
ˆ
n, where the hat indicates that
the vector is a unit vector. The rotated-hybrid method computes the face-normal numerical flux as a combination of
two numerical fluxes by breaking
ˆ
n into two orthogonal directions and applying two different numerical fluxes in the
two directions. The method applies a robust but dissipative numerical flux in a physically meaningful direction,
ˆ
n
1
,
e.g., normal to a shock wave, and a less robust but much less dissipative numerical flux in the direction
ˆ
n
2
that is
perpendicular to
ˆ
n
1
. The resulting flux has been shown to be very robust for strong shocks without adding too much
dissipation in smooth regions. Since
ˆ
n
1
is determined by a physical consideration, the problem is to find
ˆ
n
2
that is
perpendicular to a given vector,
ˆ
n
1
. Then, we can find
ˆ
n
2
by the vector triple product [112]:
ˆ
n
2
=
ˆ
n
1
× (
ˆ
n ×
ˆ
n
1
)
|
ˆ
n
1
× (
ˆ
n ×
ˆ
n
1
)|
, (1.2.26)
where the denominator is the magnitude of the numerator to make
ˆ
n
2
a unit vector. Note that the numerator is not
necessarily a unit vector. Clearly, we have
ˆ
n
2
·
ˆ
n
1
= 0, i.e.,
ˆ
n
2
is perpendicular to
ˆ
n
1
as desired. That is nice. I like
the vector triple product very much.
1.2.7 Identity Matrix
This is a matrix whose diagonal entries are all 1 and other entries are zero. Such a matrix is called the identity matrix.
For example, the 3 × 3 identity matrix is given by
I =
1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1
. (1.2.27)