3D Surface-Tension Dominated Free-Surface Flow
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Adaptive techniques for computational solution of 3D surface-tension dominated free-surface flow problems.
Dr Mark Walkley is the Research Fellow working on this project. The Principal Investigator is Prof Peter Jimack from the School of Computing, and also involved are: Prof PH Gaskell and Dr John Summers from the Engineering Fluid Mechanics Group in the School of Mechanical Engineering; and Dr Mark Kelmanson from the Dept of Applied Maths.
This work is funded for 3 years by an EPSRC Research Project grant GR/R25453/01:
The purpose of this work is to develop efficient and reliable adaptive finite element techniques for the solution of quite general transient three dimensional free surface flow problems, and to apply these techniques to the solution of a number of fundamentally important, surface tension dominated, engineering flow problems. The work will build upon the diverse and compatible expertise of the investigators in both fluid mechanics and computation algorithms to develop a new finite element solver which follows the evolution of the fluid using an arbitrary lagrangian-eulerian (ALE) approach. This will use both continuous and discrete remeshing involving both local and global adaptivity. A highly accurate representation of the domain boundary will be maintained in order to ensure the accurate implementation of the the free-surface boundary conditions which describe the critical infuence of surface tension. A series of test simulations will be undertaken to validate the ongoing work against experimental, analytical and other numerical results ( the later two being based upon lubrication apporximations in the thin-film limit). This will lead onto the simulation of more demanding flow problems which will require the full power of our three-dimensional Navier-Stokes solver. These problems will include spreading liquids over non-smooth surfaces and micro-fluidic devices.
This work follows on from the PhD research of Dr. Rick Peterson: The Numerical Solution of Free Surface Problems for Incompressible Newtonian Fluids, who studied 2D free surface flow. His thesis is available online from the School of Computing web pages.
Relevant publications are available from Peter Jimack's web page.
Contact Mark Walkley for more information about this work.