Chapter 4

Boundary and initial conditions

For time-dependent problems, an initial condition for the velocity eld, i.e. ui (xj , t = 0) has to be specied.

4.2

Boundary conditions

Fig. 4.1 shows a selection of common boundary conditions for ow problems.

free surface rigid impermeable moving boundary

inflow boundary impermeable elastic moving boundary rigid impermeable stationary boundary

Figure 4.1: Common boundary conditions.

4.2.1

Inow/outow boundary conditions

In many applications, we are only interested in the behviour of the uid in a small region (for instance, if we want to study the ventilation in a room, it would be impractical to include the earths entire atmosphere into the model. We would only model the room and treat its interaction with the rest of the world via inow boundary conditions e.g. by prescribing the wind velocity through an open window). Hence at inow (or outow) boundaries we prescribe the velocity, i.e. ui = vi , where vi is a prescribed function. (4.1)

4.2.2

Solid surfaces

Most solid surfaces are impermeable to uid and the uid sticks to their surfaces. Hence, there is no slip and no penetration, and the uid particles on the wall move with the velocity of the wall: ui = wi , 13 (4.2)

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where wi is the (known) velocity of the impermeable wall. In the special case where the walls are stationary we have ui = 0. (4.3)

4.2.3

Free surfaces

Free surfaces occur at the interface between two uids. Such interfaces require two boundary conditions to be applied: (i) A kinematic condition which relates the motion of the free interface to the uid velocities at the free surface and (ii) a dynamic condition which is concerned with the force balance at the free surface. (i) The kinematic boundary condition The position of a free surface can always be given in implicit form as F (xj , t) = 0. For instance, in Fig. 4.2 the height of the free surface above the x-axis is specied as y = h(x, t) and an appropriate function F (x, y, t) would be given by F (x, y, t) = h(x, t) y.

Fluid (2)

n(1)
Fluid (1) y

n(2)

y=h(x,t)

x
Figure 4.2: Sketch illustrating the conditions at a free surface formed by the interface between two uids. Fluid particles on the free surface always remain part of the free surface, therefore we must have DF F F . (4.4) = + uk Dt t xk This is the kinematic boundary condition. For surfaces whose position is described in the form z = h(x, y, t), the kinematic boundary condition becomes h h h w= +u +v , (4.5) t x y where u, v, w are the velocities in the x, y, z directions, respectively. For steady problems, we have F/t = 0 and the kinematic boundary condition can be written as ui ni = 0 or symbolically u n = 0, (4.6) where n is the outer unit normal on the free surface. This condition implies that there is no ow through the free surface (but there can be a ow tangential to it!). (ii) The dynamic boundary condition The dynamic boundary condition requires the stress to be continuous across the free surface which separates the two uids (air and water in Fig. 4.1). The traction exerted by uid (1) onto uid (2) is equal and opposite to the traction exerted by uid (2) on uid (1). Therefore

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we must have t(1) = t(2) . Since n(1) = n(2) (see Fig. 4.2) we obtain the dynamic boundary condition (2) (1) (4.7) ij nj = ij nj , where we can use either n(1) or n(2) as the unit normal. On curved surfaces, surface tension can create a pressure jump across the free surface. The surface tension induced pressure jump is given by p = . (4.8)

In this expression is the surface tension of the uid and is equal to twice the mean curvature of the free surface, i.e. 1 1 + , (4.9) = R1 R2 where R1 and R2 are the principal radii of curvature of the surface (for instance, = 2/a for a spherical drop of radius a and = 1/a for a circular jet of radius a). Surface tension acts like a tensioned membrane at the free surface and tries to minimise the surface area. Hence the pressure inside a spherical drop (or inside a circular liquid jet) tends to be higher than the pressure in the surrounding medium. If surface tension is important, the dynamic boundary condition has to be modied to ij nj + ni
(1) (1) (1)

= ij nj ,

(2) (1)

(4.10)

where > 0 if the centres of curvature lie inside uid (1).

4.2.4

Other boundary conditions

Other boundary conditions can occur in special applications. For instance, the presence of an elastic boundary leads to uid-structure interaction problems in which the uid velocity has to be equal to the velocity of the elastic wall, while the elastic wall deforms in response to the traction that the uid exerts on it. At porous walls, the no-penetration condition no longer holds: the volume ux into the wall is often proportional to the pressure gradient at the porous surface. Non-uniformly distributed surfactants (substances which reduce the surface tension) can induce tangential stresses at free surfaces, etc.

4.3

Further remarks

For an incompressible uid, the boundary conditions need to fulll the overall consistency condition ui ni dS = 0,
V

(4.11)

where V is the surface of the spatially xed volume in which the equations are solved. If there are no free surfaces (and associated dynamic boundary conditions), the pressure is only dened up to an arbitary constant as only the pressure gradient (but not the pressure itself) appears in the Navier-Stokes equations. For initial value problems, the initial velocity eld (at t = 0) already has to fulll the incompressibility constraint. These remarks are particularly important for the numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations.