Tree-based Local Mesh Refinement for Compressible Multiphase Flows

Abstract

Shock waves interacting with multi-material interfaces in compressible flows result in complex shock diffraction patterns involving total or partial reflection, refraction and transmission of the impinging shock wave. To simulate such complicated interfacial dynamics problems, a fixed Cartesian grid approach in conjunction with level set interface tracking is attractive. In this regard, a unified Riemann solver based Ghost Fluid Method (GFM) was developed to accurately resolve and represent the embedded solid and fluid object(s) in high speed compressible multiphase flows. While the GFM-based Cartesian grid approach significantly alleviates the complexity associated with mesh management, the method lacks flexibility in effective grid point placement in regions with rich structures in the flow field. Thus for higher-order and highly accurate sharp interface Cartesian grid based calculations with optimal computational effort, it is imperative to supplement the solution with adaptive mesh refinement technique. Hence in this work, a simple procedure is presented to complement the Riemann solver based GFM approach with quadtree (octree in three dimensions) based Local Mesh Refinement (LMR) technique for efficient and high fidelity computations involving strong shock interactions in multiphase compressible flows. The paper reports on a simple, conservative formulation for accurate calculation of ENO-based numerical fluxes at the fine-coarse mesh boundary. The numerical examples displayed in this paper clearly demonstrate that the methodology is consistent in generating satisfactory solutions, and effectively capturing fine structures in the flow.