Gradient augmented reinitialization scheme for the level set method

A hybrid scheme for reinitializing the level set function and its gradient within the frame work of the augmented level set method is presented. It is based on first dividing the domain into an interfacial region (i.e. nodes close to the interface) and its complement. Within the interfacial region, the level set and its gradient are updated explicitly through a modified version of Newton's method (Chopp, 2001, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 23 230‐244) and is implemented here within the context of Hermite polynomials. In the region away from the interface, the solution pertains to a semi‐Lagrangian implementation of the reinitialization equations, which are solved based on Hermite polynomials and are time marched with a single step and a multipoint scheme. It is shown that for various exercises, the present method predicts the signed distance function and its gradient to 4^th and 3^rd order (in space), respectively with regards to the L₁, L₂, and L _∞ norms, provided the level set field is sufficiently smooth. A range of test cases are also considered from the literature, where the present method is compared with existing methods and shown to be generally more accurate. Moreover, the well‐known issue of volume loss due to reinitialization is addressed successfully with the current implementation, even for objects that are of the size of one grid cell, and whose local radius of curvature falls below the local grid size. For both time marching schemes, it is shown that the L₂ and L _∞ errors decay to negligible levels, are smooth in space, and do not exhibit temporal oscillations. Finally the performance of the hybrid scheme is evaluated by applying it on various kinematic test cases. For solid body rotation problems (zero deformation flow field), the benefit stemming from hybrid reinitialization is marginal. When applied to kinematic cases involving severe deformation, such as the standard vortex flow, the reinitialization strategy helps maintain a smooth level set field, which prevents serious numerical errors from developing.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interface‐preserving level‐set reinitialization for DG‐FEM

This paper presents a contribution to level‐set reinitialization in the context of discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods. We focus on high‐order polynomials for the discretization and level set geometries, which are comparable to the element size. In contrast to hyperbolic and geometric reinitialization techniques, our method relies on solving a nonlinear elliptic PDE iteratively. We critically compare two different variants of the algorithm experimentally in numerical studies. The results demonstrate that the method is stable for nontrivial test cases and shows high‐order accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spurious currents in finite element based level set methods for two‐phase flow

A study of spurious currents in continuous finite element based simulations of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for two‐phase flows is presented on the basis of computations on a circular drop in equilibrium. The conservative and the standard level set methods are used. It is shown that a sharp surface tension force, expressed as a line integral along the interface, can give rise to large spurious currents and oscillations in the pressure that do not decrease with mesh refinement. If instead a regularized surface tension representation is used, exact force balance at the interface is possible, both for a fully coupled discretization approach and for a fractional step projection method. However, the numerical curvature calculation introduces errors that cause spurious currents. Different ways to extend the curvature from the interface to the whole domain are discussed and investigated. The impact of using different finite element spaces and stabilization methods is also considered. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explicit characteristic‐based finite volume element method for level set equation

Accurate modeling of interfacial flows requires a realistic representation of interface topology. To reduce the computational effort from the complexity of the interface topological changes, the level set method is widely used for solving two‐phase flow problems. This paper presents an explicit characteristic‐based finite volume element method for solving the two‐dimensional level set equation. The method is applicable for the case of non‐divergence‐free velocity field. Accuracy and performance of the proposed method are evaluated via test cases with prescribed velocity fields on structured grids. By given a velocity field, the motion of interface in the normal direction and the mean curvature, examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method for calculating interface evolutions in time. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A direct reinitialization approach of level‐set/splitting finite element method for simulating incompressible two‐phase flows

Computation of a moving interface by the level‐set (LS) method typically requires reinitialization of LS function. An inaccurate execution of reinitialization results in incorrect free surface capturing and thus errors such as mass gain/loss so that an accurate and robust reinitialization process in the LS method is essential for the simulation of free surface flows. In the present study, we pursue further development of the reinitialization process, which directly corrects the LS function after advection is carried out by using the normal vector to the interface instead of solving the reinitialization equation of hyperbolic type. The Taylor–Galerkin method is adopted to discretize the advection equation of the LS function and the P1P1 splitting finite element method is applied to solve the Navier–Stokes equation. The proposed algorithm is validated with the well‐known benchmark problems, i.e. stretching of a circular fluid element, time‐reversed single‐vortex, solitary wave propagation, broken dam flow and filling of a container. The simulation results of these flows are in good agreement with previously existing experimental and numerical results. 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.     

An explicit finite volume element method for solving characteristic level set equation on triangular grids

Level set methods are widely used for predicting evolutions of complex free surface topologies,such as the crystal and crack growth,bubbles and droplets deformation,spilling and breaking waves,and two-phase flow phenomena.This paper presents a characteristic level set equation which is derived from the two-dimensional level set equation by using the characteristic-based scheme.An explicit finite volume element method is developed to discretize the equation on triangular grids.Several examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method for calculating interface evolutions in time.The proposed level set method is also coupled with the Navier-Stokes equations for two-phase immiscible incompressible flow analysis with surface tension.The Rayleigh-Taylor instability problem is used to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Discrete formulation of mixed finite element methods for vapor deposition chemical reaction equations

The vapor deposition chemical reaction processes, which are of extremely extensive applications, can be classified as a mathematical model by the following governing nonlinear partial differential equations containing velocity vector, temperature field, pressure field, and gas mass field. The mixed finite element (MFE) method is employed to study the system of equations for the vapor deposition chemical reaction processes. The semidiscrete and fully discrete MFE formulations are derived. And the existence and convergence (error estimate) of the semidiscrete and fully discrete MFE solutions are demonstrated. By employing MFE method to treat the system of equations for the vapor deposition chemical reaction processes, the numerical solutions of the velocity vector, the temperature field, the pressure field, and the gas mass field can be found out simultaneously. Thus, these researches are not only of important theoretical means, but also of extremely extensive applied vistas.     

The optimal control variational principle and finite elements analysis for viscoplastic dynamics

This paper presents the optimal control variational principle for Perzyna model which is one of the main constitutive relation of viscoplasticity in dynamics. And it could also be transformed to solve the parametric quadratic programming problem. The FEM form of this problem and its implementation have also been discussed in the paper.     

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 efficient edge‐based level set finite element method for free surface flow problems

We present an efficient technique for the solution of free surface flow problems using level set and a parallel edge‐based finite element method. An unstructured semi‐explicit solution scheme is proposed. A custom data structure, obtained by blending node‐based and edge‐based approaches is presented so to allow a good parallel performance. In addition to standard velocity extrapolation (for the convection of the level set function), an explicit extrapolation of the pressure field is performed in order to impose both the pressure boundary condition and the volume conservation. The latter is also improved with a modification of the divergence free constrain. The method is shown to allow an efficient solution of both simple benchmark cases and complex industrial examples. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Handling contacts in an Eulerian frame: a finite element approach for fluid structures with contacts

ABSTRACT

Eulerian variational formulations for deformable solids, with or without fluids around them, end up, after implicit time discretisation, as large non-linear systems for the velocities in the moving domains. Handling moving domains and moving boundaries requires careful meshing procedures; on the other hand, the detection of contact is particularly simple with a distance function. Then at every time step, a variational inequality can be used to update the velocities. This article gives new implementation details and two new complex simulations: a very soft bouncing ball in an axisymmetric flow and a disk hit by a club.     

Continuous finite element methods for Hamiltonian systems

By applying the continuous finite element methods of ordinary differential equations,the linear element methods are proved having second-order pseudo-symplectic scheme and the quadratic element methods are proved having third-order pseudo- symplectic scheme respectively for general Hamiltonian systems,and they both keep energy conservative.The finite element methods are proved to be symplectic as well as energy conservative for linear Hamiltonian systems.The numerical results are in agree- ment with theory.     

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.     

Convected level set method for the numerical simulation of fluid buckling

‘Fluid buckling’ is a phenomenon characterized mainly by the existence of fluid toroidal oscillations during flow. It appears when a high viscosity fluid flows vertically against a flat surface and may occur in industrial applications, as in injection molding of a propergol in complex‐shaped cavities. These coiling or folding oscillations appear during the mold filling stage, leading to air entrapment. To understand and to model this free surface flow problem, a convected level set method is proposed. First, a sinus filter is applied to the distance function to get a smooth truncation far from the interface. Second, the reinitialization is embedded in the transport equation model, avoiding it as a separate step during calculation. In order to validate the method, numerical results are presented on classical interface capturing benchmarks. Finally, results are shown on two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional viscous jet buckling problems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

轴对称坐标系下含曲率的水平集方程在非结构网格上的数值方法

为了在三角形和四边形网格上采用水平集方法模拟轴对称爆轰波阵面与曲率相关的运动,假设爆轰波阵面的法向速度是曲率的线性函数,通过坐标变换得到了轴对称坐标系下的水平集方程。水平集方程的曲率无关项采用正格式离散,曲率项采用伽辽金等参有限元方法空间离散,时间离散采用半隐格式。算例表明,在轴对称三角形网格和四边形网格上,含曲率的水平集方程的离散格式为强一阶精度。给出了三角形和四边形混合网格上不光滑界面以曲率收缩的运动过程,收缩过程未出现不稳定现象。多个爆轰波阵面相互作用的算例说明本文的格式可有效地模拟曲率相关的爆轰波的相互作用问题     

A finite element model for free surface flows on fixed meshes

In this paper, we present a finite element model for free surface flows on fixed meshes. The main novelty of the approach, compared with typical fixed mesh finite element models for such flows, is that we take advantage of the particularities of free surface flow, instead of considering it a particular case of two‐phase flow. The fact that a given free surface implies a known boundary condition on the interface, allows us to solve the Navier–Stokes equations on the fluid domain uncoupled from the solution on the rest of the finite element mesh. This, together with the use of enhanced integration allows us to model low Froude number flows accurately, something that is not possible with typical two‐phase flow models applied to free surface flow. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parallel finite element methods for large-scale computation of storm surges and tidal flows

Massively parallel finite element methods for large-scale computation of storm surges and tidal flows are discussed here. The finite element computations, carried out using unstructured grids, are based on a three-step explicit formulation and on an implicit space–time formulation. Parallel implementations of these unstructured grid-based formulations are carried out on the Fujitsu Highly Parallel Computer AP1000 and on the Thinking Machines CM-5. Simulations of the storm surge accompanying the Ise-Bay typhoon in 1959 and of the tidal flow in Tokyo Bay serve as numerical examples. The impact of parallelization on this type of simulation is also investigated. The present methods are shown to be useful and powerful tools for the analysis of storm surges and tidal flows. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A conformal decomposition finite element method for modeling stationary fluid interface problems

A method is developed for modeling fluid transport in domains that do not conform to the finite element mesh. One or more level set functions are used to describe the fluid domain. A background, non‐conformal mesh is decomposed into elements that conform to the level set interfaces. Enrichment takes place by adding nodes that lie on the interfaces. Unlike other enriched finite element methods, the proposed technique requires no changes to the underlying element assembly, element interpolation, or element quadrature. The complexity is entirely contained within the element decomposition routines. It is argued that the accuracy of the method is no less than that for eXtended Finite Element Methods (XFEM) with Heaviside enrichment. The accuracy is demonstrated using multiple numerical tests. In all cases, optimal rates of convergence are obtained for both volume and surface quantities. Jacobi preconditioning is shown to remove the ill‐conditioning that may result from the nearly degenerate conformal elements. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On surface tension modelling using the level set method

The paper describes and compares the performance of two options for numerically representing the surface tension force in combination with the level set interface‐tracking method. In both models, the surface tension is represented as a body force, concentrated near the interface, but the technical implementation is different: the first model is based on a traditional level set approach in which the force is distributed in a band around the interface using a regularized delta function, whereas in the second, the force is partly distributed in a band around the interface and partly localized to the actual computational cells containing the interface. A comparative study, involving analysis of several two‐phase flows with moving interfaces, shows that in general the two surface tension models produce results of similar accuracy. However, in the particular case of merging and pinching‐off of interfaces, the traditional level set model of surface tension produces an error that results in non‐converging solutions for film‐like interfaces (i.e. ones involving large contact areas). In contrast, the second model, based on the localized representation of the surface tension force, displays consistent first‐order convergence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.