No label defined (Q4352850)

In the numerical analysis of fluid interfaces, it is difficult to distinguish the numerical instability from the physical one. Here one makes a survey of the problem, regarding the stability of boundary integral methods for waves. The advantage of using these methods is to reduce the two-dimensional problem into a one-dimensional problem involving the interface position only, consequently avoiding the hard task of differentiating discontinuous fluid quantities across the fluid interface. Boundary integral methods are generically unstable unless they satisfy a certain compatibility condition between the choice of quadrature rule for the velocity integral and the choice of spatial derivative. The paper is organized as follows. One presents the stability analysis for the spatial discretization for water waves without surface tension. The case with surface tension is considered afterwards. One shows that, without appropriate modification of the scheme, the methods are unstable. A linear stability analysis around the equilibrium is given. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0869.00036].