Numerical modeling of erosion using an improvement of the extended finite element method

Abstract

We present in this paper a numerical model of the erosion of a soil that accounts for both the flow in the open fluid and the flow of fluid through the porous soil. The interface between the open fluid and the soil is represented using a level-set function, and the erosion is controlled by the shear stress vector. The evaluation of the approximate value of this gradient is particularly focused on, and an improved method, called XFE+ method, is presented. Numerical results in 2D and 3D illustrate the accuracy and the potentiality of this method.