A Runge Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin-Direct Ghost Fluid (RKDG-DGF) Method to Near-field Early-time Underwater Explosion (UNDEX) Simulations

A coupled solution approach is presented for numerically simulating a near-field underwater explosion (UNDEX). An UNDEX consists of a complicated sequence of events over a wide range of time scales. Due to the complex physics, separate simulations for near/far-field and early/late-time are common in practice. This work focuses on near-field early-time UNDEX simulations. Using the assumption of compressible, inviscid and adiabatic flow, the fluid flow is governed by a set of Euler fluid equations. In practical simulations, we often encounter computational difficulties that include large displacements, shocks, multi-fluid flows with cavitation, spurious waves reflecting from boundaries and fluid-structure coupling. Existing methods and codes are not able to simultaneously consider all of these characteristics. A robust numerical method that is capable of treating large displacements, capturing shocks, handling two-fluid flows with cavitation, imposing non-reflecting boundary conditions (NRBC) and allowing the movement of fluid grids is required. This method is developed by combining numerical techniques that include a high-order accurate numerical method with a shock capturing scheme, a multi-fluid method to handle explosive gas-water flows and cavitating flows, and an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) deformable fluid mesh. These combined approaches are unique for numerically simulating various near-field UNDEX phenomena within a robust single framework. A review of the literature indicates that a fully coupled methodology with all of these characteristics for near-field UNDEX phenomena has not yet been developed. A set of governing equations in the ALE description is discretized by a Runge Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) method. For multi-fluid flows, a Direct Ghost Fluid (DGF) Method coupled with the Level Set (LS) interface method is incorporated in the RKDG framework. The combination of RKDG and DGF methods (RKDG-DGF) is the main contribution of this work which improves the quality and stability of near-field UNDEX flow simulations. Unlike other methods, this method is simpler to apply for various UNDEX applications and easier to extend to multi-dimensions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Aerospace and Ocean Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Aerospace and Ocean Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Park, Jinwon

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Brown, Alan J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Tafti, Danesh K.
• Hughes, Owen F.
• Kapania, Rakesh K.
• McCue-Weil, Leigh S.

• Underwater Explosion (UNDEX)
• Ghost Fluid Method (GFM)
• Level Set Method (LSM)
• Bubble
• Runge Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG)
• Multi-fluid
• Cavitation

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-09082008-132416

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/28905