Front Tracking: A Parallelized Approach for Internal Boundaries and Interfaces

Internal boundaries and interfaces are an important part of many uid and solid modeling problems. Front Tracking contains a general interface framework, closely related to the non-manifold geometry used in CAD solid modeling packages, to support numerical simulation of such uid problems. It can thus be considered to be a systematic application of the ideas of computational geometry to computational uid dynamics. It is based on the principle that nite diierences behave best when applied to diierentiable functions, and that weak derivatives of nondiierentiable functions can be replaced by regularized expressions such as jump conditions. Front Tracking ooers superior resolution for uid problems with important discontinuities and interfaces, and in some cases, it has provided the unique method to obtain correct answers. Here we present Computer Science issues which have contributed to the success of Front Tracking: software design and organization { modularity, data structures and data hiding.