Section: Software

CANARD: BEM for surface flows

Participant : Édouard Canot [corresponding author] .

When dealing with non-linear free-surface flows, mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian methods have numerous advantages, because we can follow marker particles distributed on the free-surface and then compute with accuracy the surface position without the need of interpolation over a grid. Besides, if the liquid velocity is large enough, Navier-Stokes equations can be reduced to a Laplace equation, which is numerically solved by a Boundary Element Method (BEM); this latter method is very fast and efficient because computing occur only on the fluid boundary. This method is applied to the spreading of a liquid drop impacting on a solid wall and to the droplet formation at a nozzle; applications take place, among others, in ink-jet printing processes.

The code used (CANARD) has been developped with Jean-Luc Achard (LEGI, Grenoble) for fifteen years and is used today mainly through collaborations with Carmen Georgescu at UPB (University Polytechnica of Bucarest, Romania), and with Alain Glière (CEA-LETI, Grenoble).