Numerical Simulation of the Sedimentation of Rigid Bodies in an Incompressible Viscous Fluid by Lagrange Multiplier/Fictitious Domain Methods Combined with the Taylor–Hood Finite Element Approximation

In this work we discuss an application of a distributed Lagrange multiplier based fictitious domain method, to the numerical simulation of the motion of rigid bodies settling in an incompressible viscous fluid. The solution method combines a third order finite element approximation, and time integration by operator splitting. Convergence results are shown for a simple Stokes flow with a circular rigid body that rotates with constant angular velocity. Results of numerical experiments for two sedimenting cylinders in a two-dimensional channel are presented. We present also results for the sedimentation of 100 and 504 cylinders.