Stochastic Simulations Of Fluid Mixing And Other Applications Of The Front Tracking Method

Front tracking is a computational method in which interfaces or embedded geometrical surfaces are given explicit computational degrees of freedom. It is thus a hybrid method, mixing CFD with computational geometry. We consider here three applications of Front Tracking to the computations of dynamically evolving surfaces. The first two are fluid instabilities, the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability of steady acceleration of a fluid density discontinuity interface, and the related Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability of impulsive acceleration of such interfaces. Our third test problem is surface evolution governed by the Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) equation, to model the deposition or etching of surfaces in the manufacture of semiconductor chips. Strong evidence is presented for a renormalization group (RNG) fixed point for the RT mixing problem, including a closed form solution of the RNG equations. Recently developed three dimensional computations for the RT problem are presented here. The RM Fro..