16,548 research outputs found
Hybrid finite difference/finite element immersed boundary method
The immersed boundary method is an approach to fluid-structure interaction that uses a Lagrangian
description of the structural deformations, stresses, and forces along with an Eulerian description of the
momentum, viscosity, and incompressibility of the fluid-structure system. The original immersed boundary
methods described immersed elastic structures using systems of flexible fibers, and even now, most
immersed boundary methods still require Lagrangian meshes that are finer than the Eulerian grid. This
work introduces a coupling scheme for the immersed boundary method to link the Lagrangian and Eulerian
variables that facilitates independent spatial discretizations for the structure and background grid. This
approach employs a finite element discretization of the structure while retaining a finite difference scheme
for the Eulerian variables. We apply this method to benchmark problems involving elastic, rigid, and actively
contracting structures, including an idealized model of the left ventricle of the heart. Our tests include cases
in which, for a fixed Eulerian grid spacing, coarser Lagrangian structural meshes yield discretization errors
that are as much as several orders of magnitude smaller than errors obtained using finer structural meshes.
The Lagrangian-Eulerian coupling approach developed in this work enables the effective use of these coarse
structural meshes with the immersed boundary method. This work also contrasts two different weak forms
of the equations, one of which is demonstrated to be more effective for the coarse structural discretizations
facilitated by our coupling approach
Introduction to discrete functional analysis techniques for the numerical study of diffusion equations with irregular data
We give an introduction to discrete functional analysis techniques for
stationary and transient diffusion equations. We show how these techniques are
used to establish the convergence of various numerical schemes without assuming
non-physical regularity on the data. For simplicity of exposure, we mostly
consider linear elliptic equations, and we briefly explain how these techniques
can be adapted and extended to non-linear time-dependent meaningful models
(Navier--Stokes equations, flows in porous media, etc.). These convergence
techniques rely on discrete Sobolev norms and the translation to the discrete
setting of functional analysis results
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