On the use of boundary-integral equation methods for unsteady free-surface flows

The Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian Methods (MEL) forfree-surface potential flows solved by boundary-integral equations (BIEs) is considered, and the diffusion and dispersion errors are studied in the discrete linearized problem. The diffusion error is the base for the stability analysis of the scheme; both the errors give indications on the accuracy of the numerical solution. The study is divided into two steps: comparison of the discrete dispersion relation with the analytical solution and coupling with different time-integration schemes. In particular, a stability analysis of the Runge-Kutta and Taylor-expansion schemes, previously not given in the literature, is addressed. It is shown that MEL methods based on first- and second-order explicit Runge-Kutta and Taylor-expansion schemes are unstable, regardless of the technique adopted to discretize the BIEs. Higher-order Runge-Kutta and Taylor-expansion schemes lead to conditionally stable methods. Known results for explicit, implicit and explicit-implicit Euler schemes are recovered by the present analysis. The theoretical predictions of the errors are confirmed for two different boundary-element techniques: a high-order panel method based on B-Splines to solve for the velocity potential and a spectrally-accurate method based on the Euler-McLaurin summation formula to solve directly for the velocity field.