• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1555-1569
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• 2000

Numerical simulation of fluid flow with moving free surface has been carried out. For the free surface flow, a VOF(Volume of Fluid)-based algorithm utilizing a fixed grid system has been investigated. In order to reduce numerical smearing at the free surface represented on a fixed grid system, a new free surface tracking algorithm based on the donor-acceptor scheme has been presented. Novel features of the proposed algorithm are characterized as two numerical tools; the orientation vector to represent the free surface orientation in each cell and the baby-cell to determine the fluid volume flux at each cell boundary. The proposed algorithm can be easily implemented in any irregular non-uniform grid systems that are usual in finite element method (FEM). Moreover, the proposed algorithm can be extended and applied to the 3-D free surface flow problem without additional efforts. For computation of unsteady incompressible flow, a finite element approximation based on the explicit fractional step method has been adopted. In addition, the SUPG(streamline upwind/Petrov-Galerkin) method has been implemented to deal with convection dominated flows. Combination of the proposed free surface tracking scheme and explicit fractional step formulation resulted in an efficient solution algorithm. Validity of the present solution algorithm was demonstrated from its application to the broken dam and the solitary wave propagation problems.