A conservative level-set based method for compressible solid/fluid problems on fixed grids

A three-dimensional Eulerian method is presented for simulating dynamic systems comprising multiple compressible solid and fluid components where internal boundaries are tracked using level-set functions. Aside from the interface interaction calculation within mixed cells, each material is treated independently and the governing constitutive laws solved using a conservative finite volume discretisation based upon the solution of Riemann problems to determine the numerical fluxes. The required reconstruction of mixed cell volume fractions and cut cell geometries is presented in detail using the level-set fields. High-order accuracy is achieved by incorporating the weighted-essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) method and Runge-Kutta time integration. A model for elastoplastic solid dynamics is employed formulated using the tensor of elastic deformation gradients permitting the equations to be written in divergence form. The scheme is demonstrated using selected one-dimensional initial value problems for which exact solutions are derived, a two-dimensional void collapse, and a three-dimensional simulation of a confined explosion. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.