Adaptively refined, parallelised sharp interface Cartesian grid method for three-dimensional moving boundary problems

Sharp interface Cartesian grid methods are capable of simulating complex moving boundary problems on fixed meshes while treating embedded interfaces accurately. This article further enhances the effectiveness of the sharp interface method by devising techniques for adaptive mesh resolution combined with parallel processing. These extensions enable dealing with problems involving disparate length scales encountered in many applications. A tree-based adaptive local mesh refinement scheme is developed to complement the sharp interface Cartesian grid method for efficient and optimised calculations. Detailed timing and accuracy data are presented for a variety of benchmark problems involving moving boundaries. Guidelines for selecting mesh refinement criteria for moving boundary calculations are developed. Issues associated with parallelisation of the overall framework are tackled. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated in a number of moving boundary problems, which require adequate resolution of a wide range of length scales and three-dimensional flows.