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Fast triangulated vortex methods for the 2D Euler equations

Journal Article · · Journal of Computational Physics; (United States)
 [1];  [2]
  1. Universita dell'Aquila (Italy)
  2. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

Vortex methods for inviscid incompressible two-dimensional fluid flow are usually based on blob approximations. This paper presents a vortex method in which the vorticity is approximated by a piecewise polynomial interpolant on a Delaunay triangulation of the vortices. An efficient reconstruction of the Delaunay triangulation at each step makes the method accurate for long times. The vertices of the triangulation move with the fluid velocity, which is reconstructed from the vorticity via a simplified fast multipole method for the Biot-Savart law with a continuous source distribution. The initial distribution of vortices is constructed from the initial vorticity field by an adaptive approximation method which produces good accuracy even for discontinuous initial data. Numerical results show that the method is highly accurate over long time intervals. Experiments with single and multiple circular and elliptical rotating patches of both piecewise constant and smooth vorticity indicate that the method produces much smaller errors than blob methods with the same number of degrees of freedom, at little additional cost. Generalizations to domains with boundaries, viscous flow, and three space dimensions are discussed. 52 refs., 28 figs., 2 tabs.

OSTI ID:
7083047
Journal Information:
Journal of Computational Physics; (United States), Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics; (United States) Vol. 111:2; ISSN 0021-9991; ISSN JCTPAH
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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