A time discretization scheme of a characteristics method for a fluid–rigid system with discontinuous density

Abstract

We propose a new characteristics method for the time discretization of a fluid–rigid system in the case when the densities of the fluid and the solid are different. This method is based on a global weak formulation involving only terms defined on the whole fluid–rigid domain. The main idea is to construct a characteristic function which preserves the rigidity of the solid at the discrete time levels. A convergence result for this semi-discrete scheme is then given.