291	RWTH Publication No: 47092        2008        IGPM291.pdf
TITLE	An Extended Finite Element Method Applied to Levitated Droplet Problems
AUTHORS	Patrick Esser, Jörg Grande, Arnold Reusken
ABSTRACT	We consider a standard model for incompressible two-phase flows in which a localized force at the interface describes the effect of surface tension. If a level set method is applied then the approximation of the interface is in general not aligned with the triangulation. This causes severe difficulties w.r.t. the discretization and often results in large spurious velocities. In this paper we reconsider a (modified) extended finite element method (XFEM), which in previous papers has been investigated for relatively simple two-phase flow model problems, and apply it to a physically realistic levitated droplet problem. The results show that due to the extension of the standard FE space one obtains much better results in particular for large interface tension coefficients. Furthermore, a certain cut-off technique results in better efficiency without sacrificing accuracy.
KEYWORDS	finite element, surface tension, spurious velocities, level set method, two-phase flow
DOI	10.1002/nme.2913
PUBLICATION	International journal for numerical methods in engineering IJNME 84(7), 757-773 (2010)