Computation of free-surface flows with local mesh adaptation

This paper describes a modem free-surface capturing strategy implemented in an unstructured finite-volume viscous flow solver that can handle moving grids composed of arbitrary-shaped control volumes. An adaptive mesh strategy is fully integrated in the code making it a single tool for dynamically maintaining a prescribed density of grid points around the steady or unsteady interface between air and water. The whole adaptive procedure is described in detail. The efficiency of the overall approach is examined on two- and three-dimensional hydrodynamic applications. The adaptive strategy achieves interesting gains in terms of computational and human efforts compared to single-mesh computations. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.