APPLICATION OF A NOVEL ALGORITHM FOR MOVING SURFACE FLOWS

Purpose:To demonstrate a novel algorithm for simulating moving surface flows. Methods: A fully conservative control volume method, on an adaptive Eulerian grid, has been developed to guarantee that the "kinematic free surface condition "is automatically satisfied by solving the mass and momentum conservation equations. No separate free surface tracing equation is needed. The basic idea has been extended to solve general moving surface problems by adding "boundary-node-constraints" to the solution equation set. Results; Two application problems, a critical free surface flow over an obstruction and flow past a 2-D inflated building, were predicted by the proposed method. The predicted results were in good agreement with the corresponding experimental findings. Conclusions: The proposed moving surface model permits prescribed moving walls, free surfaces, and compliant surfaces to be simulated by the same computer code. The moving surface shape is obtained as part of the solution of the conservation equations; no surface-tracing step is needed.