Title: The Immersed Finite Element Method for Incompressible Flow Computations

Date/Time: Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 2:00 – 2:30 pm (PST)

Location: Bldg. 915, Room W133 (Sandia-CA)

Brief Abstract: The immersed finite element method (IFEM) is utilized to solve complex fluid and deformable structure interaction problems. In IFEM, a Lagrangian solid mesh moves on top of a background Eularian fluid mesh which spans over the entire domain. This technique evicts the need of mesh update thus saving computation time. Both the fluid and the solid domains are modelled with the finite element method. The continuity between the fluid and solid sub-domains are enforced via the interpolation of the velocities and the distribution of forces employing the reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM) delta function. The use of such kernel functions permits non-uniform fluid spatial meshes with arbitrary geometries and boundary conditions. The goal of this work is to implement the immersed finite element method within TAHOE's infrastructure. Much of the effort this summer has been put forth implementing the stabilized formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations solver. The stabilized formulations of our main focus is the streamline-upwind/Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) and the pressure-stabilizing/Petrov-Galerkin (PSPG) method. These formulations are applied to the nonlinear Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flows. Currently, my collaborators and I are verifying the correctness of the implemented fluid algorithm. Future work necessary to fulfill the objective will also be discussed.

CSRI POC: Thao Nguyen, (925) 294-6031 and Greg Wagner (925) 294-2180