An unstructured grid-based, parallel free surface solver

An unstructured grid-based, parallel-free surface solver is presented. The overall scheme combines a finite-element, equal-order, projection-type 3-D incompressible flow solver with a finite element, 2-D advection equation so lver for the free surface equation. For steady-state applications, the mesh is not moved every timestep, in order to reduce the cost of geometry recal culations and surface repositioning. A number of modifications required for efficient processing on shared-memory, cache-based parallel machines are d iscussed, and timings are shown that indicate scalability to a modest numbe r of processors. The results show good quantitative comparison with experim ents and the results of other techniques. The present combination of unstru ctured grids (enhanced geometrical flexibility) and good parallel performan ce (rapid turnaround) should make the present approach attractive to hydrod ynamic design simulations, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. and IMACS. All ri ghts reserved.