APPLICATION OF BOUNDARY INTEGRAL TECHNIQUES TO FLUID TRACKING AND MIXING

The application of boundary integral techniques to the study of mixing of viscous fluids is presented. Single Layer and Double Layer Represe ntations for Stokes flows in bounded domains are formulated and numeri cal examples of mixing in selected geometrically-challenging two and t hree-dimensional problems are illustrated. Emphasis is given to the an alysis of errors encountered in the point evaluation of the velocity h eld and the calculation of subsequent trajectories in time-perodic flo ws. It is shown that even though individual particle paths are sensiti ve to the accumulation of discretization errors, mixing templates can be calculated with reasonable accuracy. A simple error control formula is used that enables a systematic application of boundary integral me thods to compute mixing patterns in time-periodic (chaotic) Stokes flo ws.