Numerical simulation of 3-D water collapse with an obstacle by FEM-level set method

An interface capturing approach based on a level set function for simulating transient two-phase viscous incompressible flows is applied in this paper. A narrow-band signed distance function is adopted to indicate the phase fields and the interface. The multiphase flow is numerically solved by three stages with finite element method (FEM): (1) solving a two-fluid Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations over the whole domain, (2) transporting the level set function with the obtained velocity field, (3) the level set function correction through a renormalization with continuous penalization which preserves the thickness of the interface. In this paper, the 3-D water column collapse with an obstacle is simulated, which yielded good agreement with the experimental data.