Purpose of the Simulation

We wish to study the flow of water over the spillway of the Ohio River Olmsted Dam. The domain is large, but its repetitive geometry suggests the use of periodic boundary conditions. A simulation had been performed using a relatively large slice of the domain, requiring a mesh with a large amount of elements. Within that subdomain (fig. A), the geometry is still periodic. (The image only shows the spillway and the concrete obstacles.)
A	B
This periodicity can be further exploited by performing the simulation on an even smaller slice of the domain (fig. B). The smaller size of this new subdomain means that fewer elements are needed to achieve the same resolution. This translates into less processing time. Results of this faster simulation must be compared to the previous results.

Animation: Matching velocity vectors on periodic boundaries (MPEG, 1MB)