Multiphase flow of immiscible fluids on unstructured moving meshes

Marek Krzysztof Misztal, Kenny Erleben, Adam Bargteil, Jens Fursund, B. Bunch Christensen, Jakob Andreas Bærentzen, Robert Bridson

33 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for animating multiphase flow of immiscible fluids using unstructured moving meshes. Our underlying discretization is an unstructured tetrahedral mesh, the deformable simplicial complex (DSC), that moves with the flow in a Lagrangian manner. Mesh optimization operations improve element quality and avoid element inversion. In the context of multiphase flow, we guarantee that every element is occupied by a single fluid and, consequently, the interface between fluids is represented by a set of faces in the simplicial complex. This approach ensures that the underlying discretization matches the physics and avoids the additional book-keeping required in grid-based methods where multiple fluids may occupy the same cell. Our Lagrangian
approach naturally leads us to adopt a finite element approach to simulation, in contrast to the finite volume approaches adopted by a majority of fluid simulation techniques that use tetrahedral meshes. We characterize fluid simulation as an optimization problem allowing for full coupling of the pressure and velocity fields and the incorporation of a second-order surface energy. We introduce a preconditioner based on the diagonal Schur complement and solve our optimization on the GPU. We provide the results of parameter studies as well as a performance analysis of our method.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation
EditorsP. Kry, J. Lee
Number of pages10
PublisherEurographics Association
Publication date29 Jul 2012
Pages97-106
ISBN (Print)978-3-905674-37-8
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jul 2012
EventThe 11th Symposium on Computer Animation - Switzerland, Switzerland
Duration: 29 Jul 201230 Jul 2012

Conference

ConferenceThe 11th Symposium on Computer Animation
Country/TerritorySwitzerland
CitySwitzerland
Period29/07/201230/07/2012

Keywords

  • Faculty of Science
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computational Geometry and Object Modeling
  • Physically-based modeling Computer Graphics
  • Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism
  • Animation Mathematics of Computing
  • Optimization
  • Nonlinear programming

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