A Lagrangian method for a two layer shallow water model

Abstract

One of the biggest drawbacks of Eulerian methods is the presence of the nonlinear convective terms which leads to inaccurate representations of advection and fronts. An alternative and conceptually simpler approach is the Lagrangian approach in which the fluid particles themselves are tracked and equations are derived based on local spatial interaction. In this formulation the nonlinear convective terms do not appear. The main drawback with the Lagrangian formulation, however, is that the local spatial interactions are time dependent. That is, at each time level, one must know the current neighbors of a given particle to accurately compute the forces acting on the particle. The Voroni Mesh which is continuously deforming and always linking nearest neighbors is needed. The effectiveness of a simple Lagrangian method for simulating the onset of a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in a 2 layer fluid is demonstrated.