A MIXED LAGRANGIAN-EULERIAN APPROACH TO MODELING FLUID-FLOW DURING MOLD FILLING

An updated free surface Lagrangian-Eulerian finite element kinematic d escription is used to simulate free surface flow problems associated w ith mould filling. The method proposed results in an accurate determin ation of the front, making it ideal for problems in which free surface boundary conditions play an important role. Significant saving in CPU time can be obtained over other fixed mesh approaches by virtue of th e air domain being ignored. Assuming a laminar regime for the flow fie ld, a mixed interpolation formulation is used to approximate the discr etized governing equations for elimination. Of particular interest is the method implementation to restrict the number of remeshing operatio ns and track the moving free surface within an arbitrary domain, eithe r with or without internal obstacles. The method used to automatically assign boundary conditions to the changing domain is described. A dam break problem is modelled numerically and compared against experiment ally derived data in order to validate the model. A further numerical example demonstrates the capabilities of the algorithm developed to mo del the filling of an industrial casting. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. No. of Figures: 23. No. of Tables: 0. No. of References: 38.