A VoF-Based Consistent Mass-Momentum Transport for Two-Phase Flow Simulations

Author(s):  
Annagrazia Orazzo ◽  
Isabelle Lagrange ◽  
Jean-Luc Estivalézes ◽  
Davide Zuzio

The most part of two-phase flows relevant to industrial applications is characterized by high density ratios that make numerical simulations of such kind of flows still challenging in particular when the interface assumes complex shape and is distorded by high shear. In this paper a new strategy, to overcome the numerical instabilities induced by the large densities/shears at the interface, is described for staggered cartesian grids. It consists in a consistent mass-momentum advection algorithm where mass and momentum transport equations are solved in the same control volumes. The mass fluxes are evaluated through the Volume-of-Fluid color function and directly used to calculate momentum convective term. Two and three-dimensional high-density test cases (the density ratio goes from 103 to 109) are presented. The new algorithm shows signifcantly improvements compared to standard advection methods therefore suggesting the applicability to the complete atomization process simulations.

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (04) ◽  
pp. 1350021 ◽  
Author(s):  
HAIBO HUANG ◽  
JUN-JIE HUANG ◽  
XI-YUN LU ◽  
MICHAEL C. SUKOP

Originally, the color-gradient model proposed by Rothman and Keller (R–K) was unable to simulate immiscible two-phase flows with different densities. Later, a revised version of the R–K model was proposed by Grunau et al. [D. Grunau, S. Chen and K. Eggert, Phys. Fluids A: Fluid Dyn. 5, 2557 (1993).] and claimed it was able to simulate two-phase flows with high-density contrast. Some studies investigate high-density contrast two-phase flows using this revised R–K model but they are mainly focused on the stationary spherical droplet and bubble cases. Through theoretical analysis of the model, we found that in the recovered Navier–Stokes (N–S) equations which are derived from the R–K model, there are unwanted extra terms. These terms disappear for simulations of two-phase flows with identical densities, so the correct N–S equations are fully recovered. Hence, the R–K model is able to give accurate results for flows with identical densities. However, the unwanted terms may affect the accuracy of simulations significantly when the densities of the two fluids are different. For the simulations of spherical bubbles and droplets immersed in another fluid (where the densities of the two fluids are different), the extra terms may not be important and hence, in terms of surface tension, accurate results can be obtained. However, generally speaking, the unwanted term may be significant in many flows and the R–K model is unable to obtain the correct results due to the effect of the extra terms. Through numerical simulations of parallel two-phase flows in a channel, we confirm that the R–K model is not appropriate for general two-phase flows with different densities. A scheme to eliminate the unwanted terms is also proposed and the scheme works well for cases of density ratios less than 10.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 709-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amirmahdi Ghasemi ◽  
R. Nikbakhti ◽  
Amirreza Ghasemi ◽  
Faraz Hedayati ◽  
Amir Malvandi

Purpose A numerical method is developed to capture the interaction of solid object with two-phase flow with high density ratios. The current computational tool would be the first step of accurate modeling of wave energy converters in which the immense energy of the ocean can be extracted at low cost. Design/methodology/approach The full two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations are discretized on a regular structured grid, and the two-step projection method along with multi-processing (OpenMP) is used to efficiently solve the flow equations. The level set and the immersed boundary methods are used to capture the free surface of a fluid and a solid object, respectively. The full two-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations are solved on a regular structured grid to resolve the flow field. Level set and immersed boundary methods are used to capture the free surface of liquid and solid object, respectively. A proper contact angle between the solid object and the fluid is used to enhance the accuracy of the advection of the mass and momentum of the fluids in three-phase cells. Findings The computational tool is verified based on numerical and experimental data with two scenarios: a cylinder falling into a rectangular domain due to gravity and a dam breaking in the presence of a fixed obstacle. In the former validation simulation, the accuracy of the immersed boundary method is verified. However, the accuracy of the level set method while the computational tool can model the high-density ratio is confirmed in the dam-breaking simulation. The results obtained from the current method are in good agreement with experimental data and other numerical studies. Practical/implications The computational tool is capable of being parallelized to reduce the computational cost; therefore, an OpenMP is used to solve the flow equations. Its application is seen in the following: wind energy conversion, interaction of solid object such as wind turbine with water waves, etc. Originality/value A high efficient CFD approach method is introduced to capture the interaction of solid object with a two-phase flow where they have high-density ratio. The current method has the ability to efficiently be parallelized.


2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Al-Qahtani ◽  
Hamn-Ching Chen ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Computations were performed to study three-dimensional turbulent flow and heat transfer in stationary and rotating 45 deg ribbed rectangular channels for which experimental heat transfer data were available. The channel aspect ratio (AR) is 4:1, the rib height-to-hydraulic diameter ratio e/Dh is 0.078 and the rib-pitch-to-height ratio P/e is 10. The rotation number and inlet coolant-to-wall density ratios, Δρ/ρ, were varied from 0.0 to 0.28 and from 0.122 to 0.40, respectively, while the Reynolds number was fixed at 10,000. Also, two channel orientations (β=90deg and 135 deg from the rotation direction) were investigated with focus on the high rotation and high density ratios effects on the heat transfer characteristics of the 135 deg orientation. These results show that, for high rotation and high density ratio, the rotation induced secondary flow overpowered the rib induced secondary flow and thus change significantly the heat transfer characteristics compared to the low rotation low density ratio case. A multi-block Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) method was employed in conjunction with a near-wall second-moment turbulence closure. In the present method, the convective transport equations for momentum, energy, and turbulence quantities are solved in curvilinear, body-fitted coordinates using the finite-analytic method.


Author(s):  
Qiu Jin ◽  
Dominic Hudson ◽  
W.G. Price

Abstract A combined volume of fluid and immersed boundary method is developed to simulate two-phase flows with high density ratio. The problems of discontinuity of density and momentum flux are known to be challenging in simulations. In order to overcome the numerical instabilities, an extra velocity field is designed to extend velocity of the heavier phase into the lighter phase and to enforce a new boundary condition near the interface, which is similar to non-slip boundary conditions in Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems. The interface is captured using a Volume of Fluid (VOF) method, and a new boundary layer is built on the lighter phase side by an immersed boundary method. The designed boundary layer helps to reduce the spurious velocity caused by the imbalance of dynamic pressure gradient and density gradient and to prevent tearing of the interface due to the tangential velocity across the interface. The influence of time step, density ratio, and spatial resolution is studied in detail for two set of cases, steady stratified flow and convection of a high-density droplet, where direct comparison is possible to potential flow analysis (i.e. infinite Reynold's number). An initial study for a droplet splashing on a thin liquid film demonstrates applicability of the new solver to real-life applications. Detailed comparisons should be performed in the future for finite Reynold's number cases to fully demonstrate the improvements in accuracy and stability of high-density ratio two-phase flow simulations offered by the new method.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Lv ◽  
Qingping Zou ◽  
D.E. Reeve ◽  
Yong Zhao

AbstractWe present a three dimensional preconditioned implicit free-surface capture scheme on tetrahedral grids. The current scheme improves our recently reported method [10] in several aspects. Specifically, we modified the original eigensystem by applying a preconditioning matrix so that the new eigensystem is virtually independent of density ratio, which is typically large for practical two-phase problems. Further, we replaced the explicit multi-stage Runge-Kutta method by a fully implicit Euler integration scheme for the Navier-Stokes (NS) solver and the Volume of Fluids (VOF) equation is now solved with a second order Crank-Nicolson implicit scheme to reduce the numerical diffusion effect. The preconditioned restarted Generalized Minimal RESidual method (GMRES) is then employed to solve the resulting linear system. The validation studies show that with these modifications, the method has improved stability and accuracy when dealing with large density ratio two-phase problems.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 578-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Takahira ◽  
Tomonori Horiuchi ◽  
Sanjoy Banerjee

For the present study, we developed a three-dimensional numerical method based on the level set method that is applicable to two-phase systems with high-density ratio. The present solver for the Navier-Stokes equations was based on the projection method with a non-staggered grid. We improved the treatment of the convection terms and the interpolation method that was used to obtain the intermediate volume flux defined on the cell faces. We also improved the solver for the pressure Poisson equations and the reinitialization procedure of the level set function. It was shown that the present solver worked very well even for a density ratio of the two fluids of 1:1000. We simulated the coalescence of two rising bubbles under gravity, and a gas bubble bursting at a free surface to evaluate mass conservation for the present method. It was also shown that the volume conservation (i.e., mass conservation) of bubbles was very good even after bubble coalescence.


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