A new approach to modelling an unsteady free surface in boundary integral methods with application to bubble-structure interactions Original Research Article

The interaction of transient cavities in fluid flows with rigid boundaries is investigated numerically. The class of fluid motions considered here can be described by a velocity potential and a newly-developed fully three-dimensional boundary integral method is employed to compute the evolution of the free surface. Particular attention is given to the approximation of the surface velocities by radial basis function methods, thus avoiding some of the limitations of polynomial approximation. The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated through computed examples which show the interaction of buoyancy with the Bjerknes effect of a rigid boundary for the growth and collapse of transient cavities in a fluid.