Improved conservative level set method

The standard level set (LS) method can capture the interface smoothly and gives accurate normal vectors but suffers from an excessive amount of mass gain/loss. The conservative LS method exhibits excellent mass conservation properties, but the result is usually contaminated by inaccurate interface normal vectors. To address this problem, the improved conservative LS method is proposed to capture the interface smoothly with excellent mass conservation properties. The improvement of the method lies in that the surface normal is computed from a signed distance function, which is also advected and reinitialized in the flow fields, instead of using the Heaviside function. The proposed method is implemented by implicit two‐step Taylor–Galerkin approximation within the finite element context. The approach is validated with the well‐known benchmark problems and is found out to be highly reliable and accurate. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A geometry‐based level set method for curvilinear overset grids with application to ship hydrodynamics

In a previous work (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2007; 55 :867–897), we presented a two‐phase level set method to simulate air/water turbulent flows using curvilinear body‐fitted grids for ship hydrodynamics problems. This two‐phase level set method explicitly enforces jump conditions across the interface, thus resulting in a fully coupled representation of the air/water flow. Though the method works well with multiblock curvilinear grids, severe robustness problems were found when attempting to use it with overset grids. The problem was tracked to small unphysical level set discontinuities across the overset grids with large differences in curvature. Though negligible for single‐phase approaches, the problem magnifies with large density differences between the phases, causing computation failures. In this paper, we present a geometry‐based level set method for curvilinear overset grids that overcomes these difficulties. The level set transport and reinitialization equations are not discretized along grid coordinates, but along the upwind streamline and level set gradient directions, respectively. The method is essentially an unstructured approach that is transparent to the differences between overset grids, but still the discretization is under the framework of a finite differences approach. As a result, significant improvements in robustness and to a less extent in accuracy are achieved for the level set function interpolation between overset grids, especially with big differences in grid curvature. Example tests are shown for the case of bow breaking waves around the surface combatant model David Taylor Model Basin (DTMB) 5415 and for the steady‐state ONR Tumblehome DTMB 5613 with superstructure. In the first case, the results are compared against experimental data available and in the second against results of a semi‐coupled method. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A least‐square weighted residual method for level set formulation

In this paper, a least‐square weighted residual method (LSWRM) for level set (LS) formulation is introduced to achieve interface capturing in two‐dimensional (2D) and three‐dimensional (3D) problems. An LSWRM was adopted for two semi‐discretized advection and reinitialization equations of the LS formulation. The present LSWRM provided good mathematical properties such as natural numerical diffusion and the symmetry of the resulting algebraic systems for the advection and reinitialization equations. The proposed method was validated by solving some 2D and 3D benchmark problems such as those involving a rotating slotted disk, the rotation of a slotted sphere, and a time‐reversed single‐vortex flow and a deformation problem of a spherical fluid. The numerical results were compared with those obtained from essentially non‐oscillatory type formulations and particle LS methods. Further, the proposed LSWRM for the LS formulation was coupled with a splitting finite element method code to solve the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, and then, the collapse of a 3D broken dam flow was well simulated; in the simulation, the entrapping of air and the splashing of the surge front of water were reproduced. The mass conservation of the present method was found to be satisfactory during the entire simulation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid Lagrangian–Eulerian particle‐level set method for numerical simulations of two‐fluid turbulent flows

A coupled Lagrangian interface‐tracking and Eulerian level set (LS) method is developed and implemented for numerical simulations of two‐fluid flows. In this method, the interface is identified based on the locations of notional particles and the geometrical information concerning the interface and fluid properties, such as density and viscosity, are obtained from the LS function. The LS function maintains a signed distance function without an auxiliary equation via the particle‐based Lagrangian re‐initialization technique. To assess the new hybrid method, numerical simulations of several ‘standard interface‐moving’ problems and two‐fluid laminar and turbulent flows are conducted. The numerical results are evaluated by monitoring the mass conservation, the turbulence energy spectral density function and the consistency between Eulerian and Lagrangian components. The results of our analysis indicate that the hybrid particle‐level set method can handle interfaces with complex shape change, and can accurately predict the interface values without any significant (unphysical) mass loss or gain, even in a turbulent flow. The results obtained for isotropic turbulence by the new particle‐level set method are validated by comparison with those obtained by the ‘zero Mach number’, variable‐density method. For the cases with small thermal/mass diffusivity, both methods are found to generate similar results. Analysis of the vorticity and energy equations indicates that the destabilization effect of turbulence and the stability effect of surface tension on the interface motion are strongly dependent on the density and viscosity ratios of the fluids. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A level set method for structural topology optimization with multi-constraints and multi-materials

Combining the vector level set model, the shape sensitivity analysis theory with the gradient projection technique, a level set method for topology optimization with multi-constraints and multi-materials is presented in this paper. The method implicitly describes structural material interfaces by the vector level set and achieves the optimal shape and topology through the continuous evolution of the material interfaces in the structure. In order to increase computational efficiency for a fast convergence, an appropriate nonlinear speed mapping is established in the tangential space of the active constraints. Meanwhile, in order to overcome the numerical instability of general topology optimization problems, the regularization with the mean curvature flow is utilized to maintain the interface smoothness during the optimization process. The numerical examples demonstrate that the approach possesses a good flexibility in handling topological changes and gives an interface representation in a high fidelity, compared with other methods based on explicit boundary variations in the literature. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (59805001, 10332010) and Key Science and Technology Research Project of Ministry of Education of China (No.104060)     

基于水平集方法的毛管上升特征研究

毛管上升现象与许多行业密切相关,系统地对此现象进行研究具有重大意义。与传统理论研究方法不同,本文使用N-S方程耦合水平集方法模拟毛管气液上升行为。通过与简化条件的解析解对比,验证了模拟方法的可靠性。此外,详细地研究了毛管振荡现象,并分析了影响毛管振荡行为的主要因素。结果表明,水平集方法能够精确地表征毛管振荡现象,与数值解相比具有更高的精度。毛管长度的增加能够减弱液柱振荡,主要归结于非湿相气体的粘滞力作用;湿相密度和湿相粘度同样对毛管振荡现象影响显著。湿相密度越大,惯性力越大,促进了毛管振荡;而湿相粘度变大,会增大粘滞力作用,因此减弱了毛管振荡现象。毛管振荡是由多种影响因素共同控制的,流体的惯性力是造成毛管振荡的主要原因,而粘滞力是减弱毛管振荡行为的主要因素,使液柱振荡逐渐衰减,并稳定至平衡高度。     

Level set方法在自适应Cartesian网格上的应用

采用基于自适应Cartesian网格的level set方法对多介质流动问题进行数值模拟。采用基于四叉树的方法来生成自适应Cartesian网格。采用有限体积法求解Euler方程,控制面通量的计算采用HLLC（Hartern, Lax, van Leer, Contact）近似黎曼解方法。level set方程也采用有限体积法求解,采用Lax-Friedchs方法计算通量,通过窄带方法来减少计算量,界面的处理采用ghost fluid方法。Runge-Kutta显式时间推进,时间、空间都是二阶精度。对两种不同比热比介质激波管问题进行数值模拟,其结果和精确解吻合;对空气/氦气泡相互作用等问题进行模拟,取得令人满意的结果。     

基于参数化水平集方法的微结构拓扑优化设计

相比于单一材料,复合材料具有轻质高强等优点,拓扑优化方法是设计复合材料的方法之一.本文采用改进的参数化水平集方法,更新了水平集迭代格式,并应用水平集带方法在优化过程中引入中间密度,使水平集方法与变密度法无缝结合以改善水平集方法的拓扑寻优能力,降低其初始设计依赖性.本文以最大化体积模量、剪切模量和负泊松比作为材料设计目标...     

Coupled ghost fluid/two‐phase level set method for curvilinear body‐fitted grids

A coupled ghost fluid/two‐phase level set method to simulate air/water turbulent flow for complex geometries using curvilinear body‐fitted grids is presented. The proposed method is intended to treat ship hydrodynamics problems. The original level set method for moving interface flows was based on Heaviside functions to smooth all fluid properties across the interface. We call this the Heaviside function method (HFM). The HFM requires fine grids across the interface. The ghost fluid method (GFM) has been designed to explicitly enforce the interfacial jump conditions, but the implementation of the jump conditions in curvilinear grids is intricate. To overcome these difficulties a coupled GFM/HFM method was developed in which approximate jump conditions are derived for piezometric pressure and velocity and pressure gradients based on exact continuous velocity and stress and jump in momentum conditions with the jump in density maintained but continuity of the molecular and turbulent viscosities imposed. The implementation of the ghost points is such that no duplication of memory storage is necessary. The level set method is adopted to locate the air/water interface, and a fast marching method was implemented in curvilinear grids to reinitialize the level set function. Validations are performed for three tests: super‐ and sub‐critical flow without wave breaking and an impulsive plunging wave breaking over 2D submerged bumps, and the flow around surface combatant model DTMB 5512. Comparisons are made against experimental data, HFM and single‐phase level set computations. The proposed method performed very well and shows great potential to treat complicated turbulent flows related to ship flows. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An accurate anisotropic adaptation method for solving the level set advection equation

In the present paper, a mesh adaptation process for solving the advection equation on a fully unstructured computational mesh is introduced, with a particular interest in the case it implicitly describes an evolving surface. This process mainly relies on a numerical scheme based on the method of characteristics. However, low order, this scheme lends itself to a thorough analysis on the theoretical side. It gives rise to an anisotropic error estimate which enjoys a very natural interpretation in terms of the Hausdorff distance between the exact and approximated surfaces. The computational mesh is then adapted according to the metric supplied by this estimate. The whole process enjoys a good accuracy as far as the interface resolution is concerned. Some numerical features are discussed and several classical examples are presented and commented in two or three dimensions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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

Transient free-surface (FS) 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 the positive values of the level set function, the gaseous phase by negative ones, and the FS 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 reinitialisation with continuous penalisation stage for keeping smoothness of the level set function. The proposed procedure, and particularly the renormalisation stage, is evaluated in three typical two- and three-dimensional problems.     

Optimization of unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes flows using variational level set method

This paper presents the optimization of unsteady Navier–Stokes flows using the variational level set method. The solid–liquid interface is expressed by the level set function implicitly, and the fluid velocity is constrained to be zero in the solid domain. An optimization problem, which is constrained by the Navier–Stokes equations and a fluid volume constraint, is analyzed by the Lagrangian multiplier based adjoint approach. The corresponding continuous adjoint equations and the shape sensitivity are derived. The level set function is evolved by solving the Hamilton–Jacobian equation with the upwind finite difference method. The optimization method can be used to design channels for flows with or without body forces. The numerical examples demonstrate the feasibility and robustness of this optimization method for unsteady Navier–Stokes flows.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical simulation of unsteady multidimensional free surface motions by level set method

This paper presents a numerical method that couples the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with the level set method in a curvilinear co‐ordinate system for study of free surface flows. The finite volume method is used to discretize the governing equations on a non‐staggered grid with a four‐step fractional step method. The free surface flow problem is converted into a two‐phase flow system on a fixed grid in which the free surface is implicitly captured by the zero level set. We compare different numerical schemes for advection of the level set function in a generalized curvilinear format, including the third order quadratic upwind interpolation for convective kinematics (QUICK) scheme, and the second and third order essentially non‐oscillatory (ENO) schemes. The level set equations of evolution and reinitialization are validated with benchmark cases, e.g. a stationary circle, a rotating slotted disk and stretching of a circular fluid element. The coupled system is then applied to a travelling solitary wave, and two‐ and three‐dimensional dam breaking problems. Some interesting free surface phenomena are revealed by the computational results, such as, the large free surface vortices, air entrapment and splashing of the water surge front. The computational results are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions and experimental data, where they are available. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A GPU-accelerated adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method for level set equation

This paper presents a GPU-accelerated nodal discontinuous Galerkin method for the solution of two- and three-dimensional level set (LS) equation on unstructured adaptive meshes. Using adaptive mesh refinement, computations are localised mostly near the interface location to reduce the computational cost. Small global time step size resulting from the local adaptivity is avoided by local time-stepping based on a multi-rate Adams–Bashforth scheme. Platform independence of the solver is achieved with an extensible multi-threading programming API that allows runtime selection of different computing devices (GPU and CPU) and different threading interfaces (CUDA, OpenCL and OpenMP). Overall, a highly scalable, accurate and mass conservative numerical scheme that preserves the simplicity of LS formulation is obtained. Efficiency, performance and local high-order accuracy of the method are demonstrated through distinct numerical test cases.     

From level set to volume of fluid and back again at second‐order accuracy

We present methods for computing either the level set function or volume fraction field from the other at second‐order accuracy. Both algorithms are optimal in that O(N) computations are needed for N total grid points and both algorithms are easily parallelized. This work includes a novel interface reconstruction algorithm in three dimensions that requires a smaller local block of volume fractions than existing algorithms. A compact local solver leads to better algorithm portability and efficiency: for example, fewer restrictions must be imposed on an adaptive mesh, and fewer grid cells must be communicated between processors in a parallel implementation. We also present a fast sweeping method for computing a unique approximation of the signed distance function to a piecewise linear interface. All of the numerical examples confirm second‐order accuracy on both uniform and tree‐based adaptive grids. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A geometric mass‐preserving redistancing scheme for the level set function

In this paper we describe and evaluate a geometric mass‐preserving redistancing procedure for the level set function on general structured grids. The proposed algorithm is adapted from a recent finite element‐based method and preserves the mass by means of a localized mass correction. A salient feature of the scheme is the absence of adjustable parameters. The algorithm is tested in two and three spatial dimensions and compared with the widely used partial differential equation (PDE)‐based redistancing method using structured Cartesian grids. Through the use of quantitative error measures of interest in level set methods, we show that the overall performance of the proposed geometric procedure is better than PDE‐based reinitialization schemes, since it is more robust with comparable accuracy. We also show that the algorithm is well‐suited for the highly stretched curvilinear grids used in CFD simulations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unstructured finite element model for incompressible two-phase flow based on a monolithic conservative level set method

We present a robust numerical method for solving incompressible, immiscible two-phase flows. The method extends both a monolithic phase conservative level set method with embedded redistancing and a semi-implicit high-order projection scheme for variable-density flows. The level set method can be initialized conveniently via a simple phase indicator field instead of a signed distance function (SDF). To process the indicator field into a SDF, we propose a new partial differential equation-based redistancing method. We also improve the monolithic level set scheme to provide more accuracy and robustness in full two-phase flow simulations. Specifically, we perform an extra step to ensure convergence to the signed distance level set function and simplify other aspects of the original scheme. Lastly, we introduce consistent artificial viscosity to stabilize the momentum equations in the context of the projection scheme. This stabilization is algebraic, has no tunable parameters and is suitable for unstructured meshes and arbitrary refinement levels. The overall methodology includes few numerical tuning parameters; however, for the wide range of problems that we solve, we identify only one parameter that strongly affects performance of the computational model and provide a value that provides accurate results across all the benchmarks presented. This methodology results in a robust, accurate, and efficient two-phase flow model, which is mass- and volume-conserving on unstructured meshes and has low user input requirements, making it attractive for real-world applications.     

Numerical analysis of moving interfaces using a level set method coupled with adaptive mesh refinement

A novel numerical scheme is developed by coupling the level set method with the adaptive mesh refinement in order to analyse moving interfaces economically and accurately. The finite element method (FEM) is used to discretize the governing equations with the generalized simplified marker and cell (GSMAC) scheme, and the cubic interpolated pseudo‐particle (CIP) method is applied to the reinitialization of the level set function. The present adaptive mesh refinement is implemented in the quadrangular grid systems and easily embedded in the FEM‐based algorithm. For the judgement on renewal of mesh, the level set function is adopted as an indicator, and the threshold is set at the boundary of the smoothing band. With this criterion, the variation of physical properties and the jump quantity on the free surface can be calculated accurately enough, while the computation cost is largely reduced as a whole. In order to prove the validity of the present scheme, two‐dimensional numerical simulation is carried out in collapse of a water column, oscillation and movement of a drop under zero gravity. As a result, its effectiveness and usefulness are clearly shown qualitatively and quantitatively. Among them, the movement of a drop due to the Marangoni effect is first simulated efficiently with the present scheme. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A combined level set/ghost cell immersed boundary representation for floating body simulations

A six degrees of freedom (6DOF) algorithm is implemented in the open‐source CFD code REEF3D. The model solves the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Complex free surface dynamics are modeled with the level set method based on a two‐phase flow approach. The convection terms of the velocities and the level set method are treated with a high‐order weighted essentially non‐oscillatory discretization scheme. Together with the level set method for the free surface capturing, this algorithm can model the movement of rigid floating bodies and their interaction with the fluid. The 6DOF algorithm is implemented on a fixed grid. The solid‐fluid interface is represented with a combination of the level set method and ghost cell immersed boundary method. As a result, re‐meshing or overset grids are not necessary. The capability, accuracy, and numerical stability of the new algorithm is shown through benchmark applications for the fluid‐body interaction problem. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

激波作用下三维涡的形成及其界面捕捉计算

针对三维多介质可压缩流体,给出了可压缩多介质流体三维高精度数值计算方法,以及界面捕捉方程和带重新初始化的三维LevelSet方法,对初始压力间断和密度间断条件形成激波、接触间断以及稀疏波的三维复杂流场相互作用情况进行数值计算,给出流场中涡的形成过程和界面位置。并对计算方法进行理论验证。