Sébastien Court

Sébastien Court, Michel Fournié, Alexei Lozinski

In the present work, we propose to extend to the Stokes problem a fictitious domain approach inspired by eXtended Finite Element Method and studied for Poisson problem in [Renard]. The method allows computations in domains whose boundaries do not match. A mixed finite element method is used for fluid flow. The interface between the fluid and the structure is localized by a level-set function. Dirichlet boundary conditions are taken into account using Lagrange multiplier. A stabilization term is introduced to improve the approximation of the normal trace of the Cauchy stress tensor at the interface and avoid the inf-sup condition between the spaces for velocity and the Lagrange multiplier. Convergence analysis is given and several numerical tests are performed to illustrate the capabilities of the method.

Olivier Bodart, Valérie Cayol, Sébastien Court et al.

Reduction of computational cost of solutions is a key issue to crack identification or crack propagation problems. One of the solution is to avoid re-meshing the domain when the crack position changes or when the crack extends. To avoid re-meshing, we propose a new finite element approach for the numerical simulation of discontinuities of displacements generated by cracks inside elastic media. The approach is based on a fictitious domain method originally developed for Dirichlet conditions for the Poisson problem and for the Stokes problem, which is adapted to the Neumann boundary conditions of crack problems. The crack is represented by level-set functions. Numerical tests are made with a mixed formulation to emphasize the accuracy of the method, as well as its robustness with respect to the geometry enforced by a stabilization technique. In particular an inf-sup condition is theoretically proven for the latter. A realistic simulation with a uniformly pressurized fracture inside a volcano is given for illustrating the applicability of the method.

Sébastien Court, Michel Fournié

The paper extends a stabilized fictitious domain finite element method initially developed for the Stokes problem to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with a moving solid. This method presents the advantage to predict an optimal approximation of the normal stress tensor at the interface. The dynamics of the solid is governed by the Newton's laws and the interface between the fluid and the structure is materialized by a level-set which cuts the elements of the mesh. An algorithm is proposed in order to treat the time evolution of the geometry and numerical results are presented on a classical benchmark of the motion of a disk falling in a channel.

Sébastien Court

In this article we study a mixed finite element formulation for solving the Stokes problem with general surface forces that induce a jump of the normal trace of the stress tensor, on an interface that splits the domain into two subdomains. Equality of velocities is assumed at the interface. The interface conditions are taken into account with multipliers. A suitable Lagrangian functional is introduced for deriving a weak formulation of the problem. A specificity of this work is the consideration of the interface with a fictitious domain approach. The latter is inspired by the XFEM approach in the sense that cut-off functions are used, but it is simpler to implement since no enrichment by singular functions is provided. In that context, getting convergence for the dual variables defined on the interface is non-trivial. For that purpose, an augmented Lagrangian technique stabilizes the convergence of the multipliers, which is important because their value would determine the dynamics of the interface in an unsteady framework. Theoretical analysis is provided, where we show that a discrete inf-sup condition, independent of the mesh size, is satisfied for the stabilized formulation. This guarantees optimal convergence rates, that we observe with numerical tests. The capacity of the method is demonstrated with robustness tests, and with an unsteady model tested for deformations of the interface that correspond to ellipsoidal shapes in dimension 2.