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Spurious currents in finite element based level set methods for two‐phase flow
Author(s) -
Zahedi Sara,
Kronbichler Martin,
Kreiss Gunilla
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in fluids
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1097-0363
pISSN - 0271-2091
DOI - 10.1002/fld.2643
Subject(s) - spurious relationship , discretization , finite element method , curvature , mathematics , mathematical analysis , pressure correction method , incompressible flow , navier–stokes equations , level set method , mechanics , geometry , compressibility , flow (mathematics) , classical mechanics , physics , computer science , statistics , segmentation , artificial intelligence , image segmentation , thermodynamics
SUMMARY 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.