Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

A conformal decomposition finite element method for modeling stationary fluid interface problems.

Journal Article · · Proposed for publication in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids.
OSTI ID:966608

A method is developed for modeling fluid transport in domains that do not conform to the finite element mesh. One or more level set functions are used to describe the fluid domain. A background, non-conformal mesh is decomposed into elements that conform to the level set interfaces. Enrichment takes place by adding nodes that lie on the interfaces. Unlike other enriched finite element methods, the proposed technique requires no changes to the underlying element assembly, element interpolation, or element quadrature. The complexity is entirely contained within the element decomposition routines. It is argued that the accuracy of the method is no less than that for eXtended Finite Element Methods (XFEM) with Heaviside enrichment. The accuracy is demonstrated using multiple numerical tests. In all cases, optimal rates of convergence are obtained for both volume and surface quantities. Jacobi preconditioning is shown to remove the ill-conditioning that may result from the nearly degenerate conformal elements.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Laboratories
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
966608
Report Number(s):
SAND2008-7690J
Journal Information:
Proposed for publication in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids., Journal Name: Proposed for publication in the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Enriched immersed finite element and isogeometric analysis: algorithms and data structures
Journal Article · Mon Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Engineering with Computers · OSTI ID:2587400

Guaranteed Quality Conformal Mesh Decomposition.
Journal Article · Mon Nov 30 23:00:00 EST 2015 · OSTI ID:1427199

Extended isogeometric analysis of multi-material and multi-physics problems using hierarchical B-splines
Journal Article · Mon Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · Computational Mechanics · OSTI ID:2371782