Cartesian Grid Methods for Fluid Flow in Complex Geometries 1

Biological uid dynamics typically involves geometrically complicated structures which are often deforming in time. We give a brief overview of some approaches based on using xed Cartesian grids instead of attempting to use a grid which conforms to the boundary. Both nite-diierence and nite-volume methods are discussed, as well as a combined approach which has recently been used for computing incompressible ow using the streamfunction-vorticity formulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.