ADAPTIVE GRID REFINEMENT METHODS FOR TIME-DEPENDENT FLOW PROBLEMS

In the multi-dimensional numerical simulation of certain multi-phase fluid flow processes, many phenomena are sufficiently localized and transient that self-adaptive local grid refinement techniques are necessary to resolve the local physical behavior. For large-scale simulation problems, efficiency is the key to the choice of specific adaptive strategies. Several different types of self-adaptive methods are discussed and compared. Recently, new preconditioning techniques have been developed which allow grid refinement methods to be used efficiently in existing codes without disrupting the basic solution process. These techniques are amenable to vectorization and parallelization of the algorithms.