Cut-off analysis of coherent vortical structure identification in a three-dimensional external flow

Vortical structure identification has more recently been applied in the study of the transport of vortical structures in low Reynolds number three-dimensional complex geometry flows. An important issue in this identification procedure is to choose an appropriate cut-off value ${\lambda }_2$ which takes into consideration the finite precision vortex interfaces. This cut-off choice is studied in this Note and applied to an external flow around a curved cylinder. The vortex identification technique at different cut-off values is compared to the threshold of the vorticity field showing the efficiency of choosing the optimal tolerance gap. The computations are performed with a fully three-dimensional spectral/hp element method. To cite this article: A. Miliou et al., C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).     

Dynamique multi-contact d'un système de solides tridimensionnels rigidesMulti-contact dynamics of a set of three-dimensional rigid bodies

This study is in keeping with the general pattern of dynamical simulations of a set of rigid three-dimensional bodies submitted to unilateral contact constraints with dry friction. An exact formulation (respecting the contact and friction laws) of the problem of predicting the system accelerations and the contact status, in further evolution is proposed. A numerical treatment of this kind of nonlinear problem is presented. This approach is applied to a simple multi-contact example, and yields results in agreement with those of analytical and numerical type, known for this example. To cite this article: C. Le Saux et al., C. R. Mecanique 331 (2003).     

Adaptive finite elements for the steady free fall of a body in a Newtonian fluid

The numerical simulation of the free fall of a solid body in a viscous fluid is a challenging task since it requires computational domains which usually need to be several order of magnitude larger than the solid body in order to avoid the influence of artificial boundaries. Toward an optimal mesh design in that context, we propose a method based on the weighted a posteriori error estimation of the finite element approximation of the fluid/body motion. A key ingredient for the proposed approach is the reformulation of the conservation and kinetic equations in the solid frame as well as the implicit treatment of the hydrodynamic forces and torque acting on the solid body in the weak formulation. Information given by the solution of an adequate dual problem allows one to control the discretization error of given functionals. The analysis encompasses the control of the free fall velocity, the orientation of the body, the hydrodynamic force and torque on the body. Numerical experiments for the two dimensional sedimentation problem validate the method. To cite this article: V. Heuveline, C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).     

Asymptotics at infinity of solutions to the Neumann problem in a sieve-type layerComportement asymptotique à l'infini d'un problème de Neumann dans une couche perforée

The Neumann problem is considered in a domain $\text{Ω}$, which can differ from a periodic layer inside a compact set. We prove the Fredholm property of the corresponding operator in step-weighted Sobolev spaces and determine its kernel and cokernel. All these results are based on the obtained asymptotic representation of solutions at infinity. To cite this article: S.A. Nazarov, G. Thäter, C. R. Mecanique 331 (2003).