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Ripple

RIPPLE is a model for transient, two-dimensional flows of incompressible fluids with surface tension on free surfaces of general shape. Such flows include ink-jet printers, application of industrial surfactants, casting and mold-filling applications, and dynamics of drops and bubbles. Surface tension is modeled as a volume force derived from the continuum-surface-force model, which gives RIPPLE both robustness and accuracy in modeling surface tension effects at the free surface as well as wall-adhesion effects.

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RIPPLE Features

• Finite difference discretization on an Eulerian, rectilinear mesh in Cartesian or cylindrical geometry.
• Free surfaces are modeled as volume-of-fluid (VOF) data on the mesh.
• A two-step projection method is used to solve for the incompressible flow.
• Pressure Poisson equation is solved via a robust incomplete Cholesky conjugate gradient technique.
• Flow obstacles and curved interior boundaries are representable with a partial-cell treatment.

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RIPPLE Documentation

• User's Manual (Los Alamos National Laboratory Report LA-12007-MS):
  
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• Overview article (AIAA Journal, 30: 2694-2700, 1992):
  
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• Paper detailing the RIPPLE Continuum Surface Force (CSF) model for surface tension (Journal of Computational Physics, 100: 335-354, 1992):
  
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RIPPLE Source Code Availability and Installation

• Written in Fortran 77 for UNIX-based computational platforms
• Portable to all popular workstations and PCs running UNIX with a Fortran 77 and C compiler
• Easy to tie in with any 2-D plotting package such as Plotmtv or Gnuplot .
• Available for a small fee at these software centers:
  
  • Energy Science and Technology Software Center (ESTSC)
    
  • NASA COSMIC Software Center
    
• Trouble with installation? Contact Doug Kothe (dbk@lanl.gov).
• Although we are not presently funded for further RIPPLE development, we are currently working a 3-D follow-on to RIPPLE which we call TELLURIDE.

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Users of RIPPLE and the CSF Model for Surface Tension

• An incomplete list of people (0.11 MB PostScript) who have contacted us regarding RIPPLE.
• An incomplete list of published research citing usage of RIPPLE and/or the CSF model.
• Contact Doug Kothe (dbk@lanl.gov) if your name should be added to either of these lists.
• RIPPLE simulation examples:
  
  • Metal Droplet Deformation and Solidification
  • High Pressure Die Casting

For more information about RIPPLE, contact Jeremaih Brackbill at jub@lanl.gov.