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Effects of element order and interface reconstruction in FEM/volume‐of‐fluid incompressible flow simulation
Author(s) -
Schofield Samuel P.,
Christon Mark A.
Publication year - 2012
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.3657
Subject(s) - discretization , volume of fluid method , finite element method , compressibility , advection , finite volume method , flow (mathematics) , incompressible flow , mechanics , mathematics , geometry , mathematical analysis , physics , thermodynamics
SUMMARY In previous studies, the moment‐of‐fluid interface reconstruction method showed dramatic accuracy improvements in static and pure advection tests over existing methods, but this did not translate into an equivalent improvement in volume‐tracked multimaterial incompressible flow simulation using low‐order finite elements. In this work, the combined effects of the spatial discretization and interface reconstruction in flow simulation are examined. The mixed finite element pairs, Q 1 Q 0 (with pressure stabilization) and Q 2 P − 1 are compared. Material order‐dependent and material order‐independent first and second‐order accurate interface reconstruction methods are used. The Q 2 P − 1 elements show significant improvements in computed flow solution accuracy for single material flows but show reduced convergence using element‐average piecewise constant density and viscosity in volume‐tracked simulations. In general, a refined Q 1 Q 0 grid, with better material interface resolution, provided an accuracy similar to the Q 2 P − 1 element grid with a comparable number of degrees of freedom. Moment‐of‐fluid shows more benefit from the higher‐order accurate flow simulation than the LVIRA, Youngs', and power diagram interface reconstruction methods, especially on unstructured grids, but does not recover the dramatic accuracy improvements it has shown in advection tests. Published 2012. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.