Simulation of free surface flows by a finite element interface capturing technique

BATTAGLIA, L.; STORTI, M. A.; D'ELÍA, J.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Año: 2010 vol. 24 p. 121 - 133

1061-8562

Transient free surface flows are numerically simulated by a finite element interface capturing method based on a level set approach. The methodology consists of the solution of two-fluid viscous incompressible flows for a single domain, where the liquid phase is identified by positive values of the level set function, the gaseous phase by negative ones, and the free surface by the zero level set. The numerical solution at each time step is performed in three stages: (i) a two-fluid Navier-Stokes stage, (ii) an advection stage for the transport of the level set function, and (iii) a bounded reinitialization with continuous penalization stage for keeping smoothness of the level set function. The proposed procedure, and particularly the renormalization stage, are evaluated in two typical two and three-dimensional problems.