Brent Mitchell

A Nonmatching and Sliding Interface Method for Unstructured Flow Simulations

A Thesis Presented for the Master of Science in Computational Engineering Degree, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Brent J. C Mitchell, May 2007

Abstract:
The overall objective of this study is to develop a nonmatching and sliding interface method for unstructured flow simulations. The central problem is how to compute the overlapping area of two surface elements arbitrarily oriented in a three dimensional Cartesian space. This problem is addressed with a constructive geometry approach and the resulting process is then applied to each overlapping pair to determine the overlap details for an entire surface. The overlap information is used to create edges in the unstructured solver that provide the connectivity between the discontinuous domains and allow a flux to be computed across the interface. Validation of the method and implementation is carried out on a selection of steady and unsteady model problems. Excellent agreement was obtained with both theoretical and numerical results.