Three-dimensional finite element analysis of transient fluid flow with free-surface using marker surface method and adaptive grid refinement

Abstract

For three-dimensional finite element analysis of transient fluid flow with free-surface, a new marker surface method is proposed, in which the fluid flow is represented by the marker surface composed of marker elements instead of marker particles used in the marker particle method. This also involves an adaptive grid that is created under a new criterion of element categorization of filling states and the locations in the total region at each time step. The marker surface is used in order to represent the free-surface accurately, as well as to decrease the memory and computation time, and to effectively display the predicted three-dimensional free-surface. By using the adaptive grid in which the elements, finer than those in internal and external regions, are distributed in the surface region through refinement and coarsening procedures, the analysis of three-dimensional transient fluid flow with free-surface is achieved more efficiently. Through three-dimensional analysis of two kinds of problems using several grids, the efficiency of the proposed marker surface method and the adaptive grid are verified. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.