Research

Recursive reduction quadrature for the evaluation of Laplace layer potentials in three dimensions, S. Jiang and H. Zhu, arxiv, 2024

A high-order quadrature rule is constructed for the evaluation of Laplace single and double layer potentials and their normal derivatives on smooth surfaces in three dimensions. The construction begins with a harmonic approximation of the density on each patch, which allows for a natural harmonic polynomial extension in a volumetric neighborhood of the patch in the ambient space. Then by the general Stokes theorem, singular and nearly singular surface integrals are reduced to line integrals preserving the singularity of the kernel, instead of the standard origin-centered 1-forms that require expensive adaptive integration. These singularity-preserving line integrals can be semi-analytically evaluated using singularity-swap quadrature. In other words, the evaluation of singular and nearly singular surface integrals is reduced to function evaluations on the vertices on the boundary of each patch. The recursive reduction quadrature largely removes adaptive integration that is needed in most existing high-order quadratures for singular and nearly singular surface integrals, resulting in exceptional performance. The scheme achieves twelve-digit accuracy uniformly for close evaluations and offers a speedup of five times or more in constructing the sparse quadrature-correction matrix compared to previous state-of-the-art quadrature schemes.

Shape optimization of slip-driven axisymmetric microswimmers, R. Liu, H. Zhu, H. Guo, M. Bonnet, and S. Veerapaneni, Accepted in SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 2024

In this work, we develop a computational framework that aims at simultaneously optimizing the shape and the slip velocity of an axisymmetric microswimmer suspended in a viscous fluid. We consider shapes of a given reduced volume that maximize the swimming efficiency, i.e., the (size-independent) ratio of the power loss arising from towing the rigid body of the same shape and size at the same translation velocity to the actual power loss incurred by swimming via the slip velocity. The optimal slip and efficiency (with shape fixed) are here given in terms of two Stokes flow solutions, and we then establish shape sensitivity formulas of adjoint-solution that provide objective function derivatives with respect to any set of shape parameters on the sole basis of the above two flow solutions. Our computational treatment relies on a fast and accurate boundary integral solver for solving all Stokes flow problems. We validate our analytic shape derivative formulas via comparisons against finite-difference gradient evaluations, and present several shape optimization examples.

Hydrodynamic bound states of rotating micro-cylinders in a confining geometry, H. Guo, Y. Man, and H. Zhu, Physical Review Fluids, 2024

Many microswimmers propel themselves by rotating microcylindrical organelles such as flagella or cilia. These cylindrical organelles almost never live in free space, yet their motions in a confining geometry can be counterintuitive. For example, one of the intriguing yet classical results in this regard is that a rotating cylinder next to a plane wall does not generate any net force in Newtonian fluids and therefore does not translate. In this work we employ analytical and numerical tools to investigate the motions of microcylinders under prescribed torques in a confining geometry. We show that a cylinder pair can form four nontrivial hydrodynamic bound states depending on the relative position within the confinement. Our analysis shows that the distinct states are the results of competing effects of the hydrodynamic interactions within the cylinder pair and between the active cylinders and the confinement.

A fast, high-order scheme for evaluating volume potentials on complex 2D geometries via area-to-line integral conversion and domain mappings, T. Anderson, H. Zhu, and S. Veerapaneni, Journal of Computational Physics, 2023

While potential theoretic techniques have received significant interest and found broad success in the solution of linear partial differential equations (PDEs) in mathematical physics, limited adoption is reported in the case of nonlinear and/or inhomogeneous problems (i.e. with distributed volumetric sources) owing to outstanding challenges in producing a particular solution on complex domains while simultaneously respecting the competing ideals of allowing complete geometric flexibility, enabling source adaptivity, and achieving optimal computational complexity. This article presents a new high-order accurate algorithm for finding a particular solution to the PDE by means of a convolution of the volumetric source function with the Green's function in complex geometries. Utilizing volumetric domain decomposition, the integral is computed over a union of regular boxes (lending the scheme compatibility with adaptive box codes) and triangular regions (which may be potentially curved near boundaries). Singular and near-singular quadrature is handled by converting integrals on volumetric regions to line integrals bounding a reference volume cell using cell mappings and elements of the Poincaré lemma, followed by leveraging existing one-dimensional near-singular and singular quadratures appropriate to the singular nature of the kernel. 

Shape optimization of peristaltic pumps transporting rigid particles in Stokes flow, M. Bonnet, R. Liu, S. Veerapaneni and H. Zhu, SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, 2023

This paper presents a computational approach for finding the optimal shapes of peristaltic pumps transporting rigid particles in Stokes flow. In particular, we consider shapes that minimize the rate of energy dissipation while pumping a prescribed volume of fluid, number of particles and/or distance traversed by the particles over a set time period. Our approach relies on a recently developed fast and accurate boundary integral solver for simulating multiphase flows through periodic geometries of arbitrary shapes. In order to fully capitalize on the dimensionality reduction feature of the boundary integral methods, shape sensitivities must ideally involve evaluating the physical variables on the particle or pump boundaries only. We show that this can indeed be  accomplished owing to the linearity of Stokes flow. The forward problem solves for the particle motion in a slip-driven pipe flow while the adjoint problems in our construction solve quasi-static Dirichlet boundary value problems backwards in time, retracing the particle evolution. The shape sensitivies simply depend on the solution of one forward and one adjoint (for each shape functional) problems. We validate these analytic shape derivative formulas by comparing against finite-difference based gradients and present several examples showcasing optimal pump shapes under various constraints.