arXiv subjects

Thomas Richter

Publications and source records attributed to Thomas Richter.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Falling balls in a viscous fluid with contact: Comparing numerical simulations with experimental data

We evaluate a number of different finite element approaches for fluid-structure (contact) interaction problems against data from physical experiments. For this we take the data from experiments by Hagemeier [Mendeley Data, doi: 10.17632/mf27c92nc3.1]. This consists of trajectories of single particles falling through a highly viscous fluid and rebounding off the bottom fluid tank wall. The resulting flow is in the transitional regime between creeping and turbulent flows. This type of configuration is particularly challenging for numerical methods due to the large change of the fluid domain and the contact between the wall and particle. In the numerical simulations we consider both rigid body and linear elasticity models for the falling particles. In the first case, we compare results obtained with the well established Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) approach and a moving domain CutFEM method together with a simple and common approach for contact avoidance. For the full fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problem with contact, we use a fully Eulerian approach in combination with a unified FSI-contact treatment using Nitsche's method. For higher computational efficiency we use the geometrical symmetry of the experimental set up to reformulate the FSI system into two spatial dimensions. Finally, we show full three dimensional ALE computations to study the effects of small perturbations in the initial state of the particle to investigate deviations from a perfectly vertical fall observed in the experiment. The methods are implemented in open-source finite element libraries and the results are made freely available to aide reproducibility.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

A finite element / neural network framework for modeling suspensions of non-spherical particles. Concepts and medical applications

An accurate prediction of the translational and rotational motion of particles suspended in a fluid is only possible if a complete set of correlations for the force coefficients of fluid-particle interaction is known. The present study is thus devoted to the derivation and validation of a new framework to determine the drag, lift, rotational and pitching torque coefficients for different non-spherical particles in a fluid flow. The motivation for the study arises from medical applications, where particles may have an arbitrary and complex shape. Here, it is usually not possible to derive accurate analytical models for predicting the different hydrodynamic forces. However, considering for example the various components of blood, their shape takes an important role in controlling several body functions such as control of blood viscosity or coagulation. Therefore, the presented model is designed to be applicable to a broad range of shapes. Another important feature of the suspensions occurring in medical and biological applications is the high number of particles. The modelling approach we propose can be efficiently used for simulations of solid-liquid suspensions with numerous particles. Based on resolved numerical simulations of prototypical particles we generate data to train a neural network which allows us to quickly estimate the hydrodynamic forces experienced by a specific particle immersed in a fluid.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Settling of spherical particles in the transitional regime

The settling process and wall impact of large spherical particles in a stagnant, highly viscous fluid has been observed by means of high-speed shadow imaging. The particles included in this study vary in size and material properties: steel, polytetrafluorethylen (PTFE), polyoxymethylen (POM), or rubber. The corresponding terminal Reynolds numbers range from 333 to 4012, covering in principle the transitional and Newton regime for drag forces. For collision studies, the Stokes number just before impact is also relevant, and lies in the range 50 < St < 2250. The settling curves obtained experimentally are compared with numerical and analytical solutions. The latter has been derived on the basis of nominal terminal velocity and relaxation time for the Stokes and Newton regimes. A deviation between experimental results and analytical solution was observed in all cases where the terminal Reynolds number is larger than 300 and smaller than 1100. In this flow regime, the settling process of the spheres is already affected at a long distance from the impact object, leading to an early but significant deceleration. Moreover, a reduced settling velocity was observed along the whole trajectory for the PTFE particles with the lowest terminal Reynolds number. All processed datasets are available via the Mendeley Data repository. Two additional effects have been observed during this study. First, a bright region was detected around all PTFE spheres. It finally was found to be due to total light reflection around the sphere, but, to the best of our knowledge, this peculiarity has never been reported before. Being purely optical, this does not effect the settling behavior for PTFE. On the other hand, partial absorption of liquid at the particle surface was observed for rubber, leading to a reduced sedimentation velocity.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Finite Element Error Estimates on Geometrically Perturbed Domains

We develop error estimates for the finite element approximation of elliptic partial differential equations on perturbed domains, i.e. when the computational domain does not match the real geometry. The result shows that the error related to the domain can be a dominating factor in the finite element discretization error. The main result consists of $H^1-$ and $L_2-$ error estimates for the Laplace problem. Theoretical considerations are validated by a computational example.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

A goal oriented error estimator and mesh adaptivity for sea ice simulations

For the first time we introduce an error estimator for the numerical approximation of the equations describing the dynamics of sea ice. The idea of the estimator is to identify different error contributions coming from spatial and temporal discretization as well as from the splitting in time of the ice momentum equations from further parts of the coupled system. The novelty of the error estimator lies in the consideration of the splitting error, which turns out to be dominant with increasing mesh resolution. Errors are measured in user specified functional outputs like the total sea ice extent. The error estimator is based on the dual weighted residual method that asks for the solution of an additional dual problem for obtaining sensitivity information. Estimated errors can be used to validate the accuracy of the solution and, more relevant, to reduce the discretization error by guiding an adaptive algorithm that optimally balances the mesh size and the time step size to increase the efficiency of the simulation.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Adaptive time-step control for a monolithic multirate scheme coupling the heat and wave equation

We consider the dynamics of a parabolic and a hyperbolic equation coupled on a common interface and develop time-stepping schemes that can use different time-step sizes for each of the subproblems. The problem is formulated in a strongly coupled (monolithic) space-time framework. Coupling two different step sizes monolithically gives rise to large algebraic systems of equations where multiple states of the subproblems must be solved at once. For efficiently solving these algebraic systems, we inherit ideas from the partitioned regime and present two decoupling methods, namely a partitioned relaxation scheme and a shooting method. Furthermore, we develop an a posteriori error estimator serving as a mean for an adaptive time-stepping procedure. The goal is to optimally balance the time step sizes of the two subproblems. The error estimator is based on the dual weighted residual method and relies on the space-time Galerkin formulation of the coupled problem. As an example, we take a linear set-up with the heat equation coupled to the wave equation. We formulate the problem in a monolithic manner using the space-time framework. In numerical test cases, we demonstrate the efficiency of the solution process and we also validate the accuracy of the a posteriori error estimator and its use for controlling the time step sizes.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Axisymmetric Stokes flow due to a point-force singularity acting between two coaxially positioned rigid no-slip disks

We investigate theoretically on the basis of the steady Stokes equations for a viscous incompressible fluid the flow induced by a Stokeslet located on the centre axis of two coaxially positioned rigid disks. The Stokeslet is directed along the centre axis. No-slip boundary conditions are assumed to hold at the surfaces of the disks. We perform the calculation of the associated Green's function in large parts analytically, reducing the spatial evaluation of the flow field to one-dimensional integrations amenable to numerical treatment. To this end, we formulate the solution of the hydrodynamic problem for the viscous flow surrounding the two disks as a mixed-boundary-value problem, which we then reduce into a system of four dual integral equations. We show the existence of viscous toroidal eddies arising in the fluid domain bounded by the two disks, manifested in the plane containing the centre axis through adjacent counterrotating eddies. Additionally, we probe the effect of the confining disks on the slow dynamics of a point-like particle by evaluating the hydrodynamic mobility function associated with axial motion. Thereupon, we assess the appropriateness of the commonly-employed superposition approximation and discuss its validity and applicability as a function of the geometrical properties of the system. Additionally, we complement our semi-analytical approach by finite-element computer simulations, which reveals a good agreement. Our results may find applications in guiding the design of microparticle-based sensing devices and electrokinetic transport in small scale capacitors.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Low-rank Linear Fluid-structure Interaction Discretizations

Fluid-structure interaction models involve parameters that describe the solid and the fluid behavior. In simulations, there often is a need to vary these parameters to examine the behavior of a fluid-structure interaction model for different solids and different fluids. For instance, a shipping company wants to know how the material, a ship's hull is made of, interacts with fluids at different Reynolds and Strouhal numbers before the building process takes place. Also, the behavior of such models for solids with different properties is considered before the prototype phase. A parameter-dependent linear fluid-structure interaction discretization provides approximations for a bundle of different parameters at one step. Such a discretization with respect to different material parameters leads to a big block-diagonal system matrix that is equivalent to a matrix equation as discussed in [KressnerTobler 2011]. The unknown is then a matrix which can be approximated using a low-rank approach that represents the iterate by a tensor. This paper discusses a low-rank GMRES variant and a truncated variant of the Chebyshev iteration. Bounds for the error resulting from the truncation operations are derived. Numerical experiments show that such truncated methods applied to parameter-dependent discretizations provide approximations with relative residual norms smaller than $10^{-8}$ within a twentieth of the time used by individual standard approaches.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

A Low-rank Approach for Nonlinear Parameter-dependent Fluid-structure Interaction Problems

Parameter-dependent discretizations of linear fluid-structure interaction problems can be approached with low-rank methods. When discretizing with respect to a set of parameters, the resulting equations can be translated to a matrix equation since all operators involved are linear. If nonlinear FSI problems are considered, a direct translation to a matrix equation is not possible. We present a method that splits the parameter set into disjoint subsets and, on each subset, computes an approximation of the problem related to the upper median parameter by means of the Newton iteration. This approximation is then used as initial guess for one Newton step on a subset of problems.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

Efficient approximation of flow problems with multiple scales in time

In this article we address flow problems that carry a multiscale character in time. In particular we consider the Navier-Stokes flow in a channel on a fast scale that influences the movement of the boundary which undergoes a deformation on a slow scale in time. We derive an averaging scheme that is of first order with respect to the ratio of time-scales $ε$. In order to cope with the problem of unknown initial data for the fast scale problem, we assume near-periodicity in time. Moreover, we construct a second-order accurate time discretisation scheme and derive a complete error analysis for a corresponding simplified ODE system. The resulting multiscale scheme does not ask for the continuous simulation of the fast scale variable and shows powerful speed-ups up to 1:10000 compared to a resolved simulation. Finally, we present some numerical examples for the full Navier-Stokes system to illustrate the convergence and performance of the approach.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

On the Impact of Fluid Structure Interaction in Blood Flow Simulations: Stenotic Coronary Artery Benchmark

We study the impact of using fluid-structure interactions (FSI) to simulate blood flow in a large stenosed artery. We compare typical flow configurations using Navier-Stokes in a rigid geometry setting to a fully coupled FSI model. The relevance of vascular elasticity is investigated with respect to several questions of clinical importance. Namely, we study the effect of using FSI on the wall shear stress distribution, on the Fractional Flow Reserve and on the damping effect of a stenosis on the pressure amplitude during the pulsatory cycle. The coupled problem is described in a monolithic variational formulation based on Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) coordinates. For comparison, we perform pure Navier-Stokes simulations on a prestressed geometry to give a good matching of both configurations. A series of numerical simulations that cover important hemodynamical factors are presented and discussed.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2020

The candy wrapper problem -- a temporal multiscale approach for pde/pde systems

We describe a temporal multiscale approach for the simulation of long-term processes with short-term influences involving partial differential equations. The specific problem under consideration is a growth process in blood vessels. The \emph{Candy Wrapper Process} describes a restenosis in a vessel that has previously be widened by inserting a stent. The development of a new stenosis takes place on a long time horizon (months) while the acting forces are mainly given by the pulsating blood flow. We describe a coupled pde model and a finite element simulation that is used as basis for our multiscale approach, which is based on averaging the long scale equation and approximating the fast scale impact by localized periodic-in-time problems. Numerical test cases in prototypical 3d configurations demonstrate the power of the approach.

math.NA↗

arXiv2020

An unfitted Eulerian finite element method for the time-dependent Stokes problem on moving domains

We analyse a Eulerian Finite Element method, combining a Eulerian time-stepping scheme applied to the time-dependent Stokes equations using the CutFEM approach with inf-sup stable Taylor-Hood elements for the spatial discretisation. This is based on the method introduced by Lehrenfeld \& Olshanskii [ESAIM: M2AN 53(2):585--614] in the context of a scalar convection-diffusion problems on moving domains, and extended to the non-stationary Stokes problem on moving domains by Burman, Frei \& Massing [arXiv:1910.03054 [math.NA]] using stabilised equal-order elements. The analysis includes the geometrical error made by integrating over approximated levelset domains in the discrete CutFEM setting. The method is implemented and the theoretical results are illustrated using numerical examples.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

An averaging scheme for the efficient approximation of time-periodic flow problems

We study periodic solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations. The transition phase of a dynamic Navier-Stokes solution to the periodic-in-time state can be excessively long and it depends on parameters like the domain size and the viscosity. Several methods for an accelerated identification of the correct initial data that will yield the periodic state exist. They are mostly based on space-time frameworks for directly computing the periodic state or on optimization schemes or shooting methods for quickly finding the correct initial data that yields the periodic solution. They all have a large computational overhead in common. Here we describe and analyze a simple averaging scheme that comes at negligible additional cost. We numerically demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the scheme for several test-cases and we will theoretically show convergence for the linear Stokes problem.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

Second order pressure estimates for the Crank-Nicolson discretization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations

We provide optimal order pressure error estimates for the Crank-Nicolson semidiscretization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Second order estimates for the velocity error are long known, we prove that the pressure error is of the same order if considered at interval midpoints, confirming previous numerical evidence. For simplicity we first give a proof under high regularity assumptions that include nonlocal compatibility conditions for the initial data, then use smoothing techniques for a proof under reduced assumptions based on standard local conditions only.

math.NA↗

arXiv2019

Numerical benchmarking of fluid-rigid body interactions

We propose a fluid-rigid body interaction benchmark problem, consisting of a solid spherical obstacle in a Newtonian fluid, whose centre of mass is fixed but is free to rotate. A number of different problems are defined for both two and three spatial dimensions. The geometry is chosen specifically, such that the fluid-solid partition does not change over time and classical fluid solvers are able to solve the fluid-structure interaction problem. We summarise the different approaches used to handle the fluid-solid coupling and numerical methods used to solve the arising problems. The results obtained by the described methods are presented and we give reference intervals for the relevant quantities of interest.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2019

Industrial DevOps

The visions and ideas of Industry 4.0 require a profound interconnection of machines, plants, and IT systems in industrial production environments. This significantly increases the importance of software, which is coincidentally one of the main obstacles to the introduction of Industry 4.0. Lack of experience and knowledge, high investment and maintenance costs, as well as uncertainty about future developments cause many small and medium-sized enterprises hesitating to adopt Industry 4.0 solutions. We propose Industrial DevOps as an approach to introduce methods and culture of DevOps into industrial production environments. The fundamental concept of this approach is a continuous process of operation, observation, and development of the entire production environment. This way, all stakeholders, systems, and data can thus be integrated via incremental steps and adjustments can be made quickly. Furthermore, we present the Titan software platform accompanied by a role model for integrating production environments with Industrial DevOps. In two initial industrial application scenarios, we address the challenges of energy management and predictive maintenance with the methods, organizational structures, and tools of Industrial DevOps.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2019

Parallel time-stepping for fluid-structure interactions

We present a parallel time-stepping method for fluid-structure interactions. The interaction between the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and a hyperelastic solid is formulated in a fully monolithic framework. Discretization in space is based on equal order finite element for all variables and a variant of the Crank-Nicolson scheme is used as second order time integrator. To accelerate the solution of the systems, we analyze a parallel-in time method. For different numerical test cases in 2d and in 3d we present the efficiency of the resulting solution approach. We also discuss some special challenges and limitations that are connected to the special structure of fluid-structure interaction problem.

math.NA↗