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49-56 (2007)
1. INTRODUCTION
In many problems of engineering interest, the
boundary of the computational domain can change
with time. For instance, for flow within the cylinder
of an internal combustion engine, the boundary
motion is prescribed for a given engine speed. For
other problems, such as liquid wave propagation
and open channel flows, the motion of the surface is
determined by the fluid flow itself. Many flows in
geophysics and industrial engineering have a gasliquid interface (free-surface). The free-surface
alters the turbulence structure near the surface
significantly. In particular, the kinetic energy of
vertical velocity fluctuations is redistributed to
horizontal motions. Computations of free-surface
flows have now been carried out by a number of
workers [Demirdzic & Peric (1988), Farmer et al
(1994), Kordulla (1983), Muzaferija & Peric (1998),
Th, et al (1994), Thomas, Leslie & Williams (1995)
and Meselhe & Sotiropoulos (2000)] with, in
general, results showing good agreement with
experiments and theoretical solutions. Also, many
methods have been used to track the free-surface.
These can, however, be classified into two major
groups in a manner similar to the techniques used to
follow shocks: interface-capturing and interfacetracking methods. For the interface capturing
method the surface is determined from the volume
of liquid within the computational cell (usually
Cartesian) and an additional equation has to be
solved for this fraction (or concentration). With the
interface-tracking method however a boundaryfitted grid is used which is re-adjusted each time the
free- surface is moved (usually at each time step).
U ndS = 0,
s
d + (U W ) ndS = 0,
d
dt
ui d + ui (U W ) ndS
P
=
d +
x
i
g i d + ij n j dS
(6)
2. GOVERNING EQUATIONS
d
dt
(1)
(2)
(3)
ij = i +
x j xi
3. NUMERICAL METHOD
5. NUMERICAL RESULTS
4. COMPUTATIONAL MESH
The free-surface is approximated by the piecewiselinear grid, as shown in 2D in Fig. 1. The time
evolution of the free-surface is therefore defined by
the motion of the corner points on the surface and,
to keep the internal mesh well distributed, it is
important that it also moves with the surface. This
internal mesh motion can be obtained by solving a
set of equations or can be algebraically related to
the surface motion and either method could be used
in the code. The relation between internal and
surface nodes are given by the following
equations:x( i , j ,k ) x b ( j ,k )
= ( i , j ,k ),
(8)
x t ( j , k ) x b ( j ,k )
y ( i , j , k ) y b ( i ,k )
= ( i , j ,k ),
(9)
y t ( i ,k ) y b ( i ,k )
z( i , j , k ) z b ( i , j )
= ( i , j ,k ),
(10)
zt ( i , j ) zb ( i , j )
where xb, yb, zb and xt, yt, zt denote the elevations of
the corners on the bottom and top boundaries.
Over the time step t = tn - tn-1, the change in
elevation of a corner point:
x( i , j ,k ) = x n ( i , j ,k ) x n 1 ( i , j ,k )
(11)
y( i , j ,k ) = y n ( i , j ,k ) y n 1 ( i , j ,k )
z( i , j ,k ) = z ( i , j ,k ) z
n
n 1
( i , j ,k )
5.1
Wave tests
5.1.1 Tank sloshing
The transient capability of the code was tested by
predicting the evolution of a wave with an initial
shape given by 1.0 + 0.01cos((1 + x)) as it sloshed
in a tank. The length of the tank and mean depth
was = 1.0, the amplitude a = 0.01, g = 9.8 and the
viscosity and initial velocities were zero. Wall
(12)
(13)
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5.2
Viscous flow tests
5.2.1 Couette flow
The code was first run for a channel of depth H = 1,
length = 6 and width = 4 and periodic boundary
conditions were used in both horizontal directions.
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REFERENCES
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