A front-tracking method for the simulating of 3D multi-fluid flows with free surfaces

De Sousa, F.S. and Mangiavacchi, N. and Nonato, L.G. and Castelo, A. and Tomé, M.F. and Ferreira, V.G. and Cuminato, J.A. and McKee, S. (2004) A front-tracking method for the simulating of 3D multi-fluid flows with free surfaces. Journal of Computational Physics, 198 (2). pp. 469-499. ISSN 0021-9991 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2004.01.032)

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Abstract

A method for simulating incompressible, imiscible, unsteady, Newtonian, multi-fluid flows with free surfaces is described. A sharp interface separates fluids of different density and viscosity. Surface and interfacial tensions are also considered and the required curvature is geometrically approximated at the fronts by a least squares quadratic fitting. To remove small undulations at the fronts, a mass-conserving filter is employed. The numerical method employed to solve the Navier-Stokes equations is based on the GENSMAC-3D front-tracking method. The velocity field is computed using a finite-difference scheme on an Eulerian grid. The free-surface and the interfaces are represented by an unstructured Lagrangian grid moving through an Eulerian grid. The method was validated by comparing the numerical results with analytical results for a number of simple problems. Complex numerical simulations show the capability and emphasize the robustness of this new method.