A hybrid approach to flow net generation

By following a simple set of rules. a flow net can be manually constructed to obtain a graphical solution to the Laplace equation for simple two-dimensional (2-D) flow problems. With the advent of numerical solutions such as the finite difference and finite element methods, it is more common to generate a flow net automatically using the nodal head and flow values output by the computer program. Two methods have been published for automatically generating flow nets from finite element solutions: the stream-function method and the particle-tracking method. The stream-function method works well for many cases, but it does not work for problems with holes in the mesh or internal sources or sinks. The particle-tracking method works for all cases, but previously published algorithms that utilize this method do not result in the properly sized flow channels. A new approach is presented in this paper that is a hybrid of the stream-function and particle-tracking approaches. This method works for all cases and generates the properly sized flow channels. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.