Equation of State’s Crossover Enhancement of Pseudopotential Lattice Boltzmann Modeling of CO2 Flow in Homogeneous Porous Media

The original Shan-Chen’s pseudopotential Lattice Boltzmann Model (LBM) has continuously evolved during the past two decades. However, despite its capability to simulate multiphase flows, the model still faces challenges when applied to multicomponent-multiphase flows in complex geometries with a moderately high-density ratio. Furthermore, classical cubic equations of state usually incorporated into the model cannot accurately predict fluid thermodynamics in the near-critical region. This paper addresses these issues by incorporating a crossover Peng–Robinson equation of state into LBM and further improving the model to consider the density and the critical temperature differences between the CO2 and water during the injection of the CO2 in a water-saturated 2D homogeneous porous medium. The numerical model is first validated by analyzing the supercritical CO2 penetration into a single narrow channel initially filled with H2O, depicting the fundamental role of the driving pressure gradient to overcome the capillary resistance in near one and higher density ratios. Significant differences are observed by extending the model to the injection of CO2 into a 2D homogeneous porous medium when using a flat versus a curved inlet velocity profile.

A Cartesian Method with Second-Order Pressure Resolution for Incompressible Flows with Large Density Ratios

An Eulerian method to numerically solve incompressible bifluid problems with high density ratio is presented. This method can be considered as an improvement of the Ghost Fluid method, with the specificity of a sharp second-order numerical scheme for the spatial resolution of the discontinuous elliptic problem for the pressure. The Navier–Stokes equations are integrated in time with a fractional step method based on the Chorin scheme and discretized in space on a Cartesian mesh. The bifluid interface is implicitly represented using a level-set function. The advantage of this method is its simplicity to implement in a standard monofluid Navier–Stokes solver while being more accurate and conservative than other simple classical bifluid methods. The numerical tests highlight the improvements obtained with this sharp method compared to the reference standard first-order methods.

A Combined Volume of Fluid and Immersed Boundary Method for Modelling of Two-Phase Flows with High Density Ratio

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.

Experimental investigation of blunt cone model at hypersonic Mach number 7.25

Experiments were carried out in hypersonic shock tunnel in Defence Research and Directorate Laboratory at hypersonic Mach number of 7.25 using an 11.37° apex-angle blunt cone model. Heat flux measurement was carried out on cone model at different angles of attack with angle of rotation ϕ = 0° to 360° in steps of 45° with vacuum sputtered platinum thin film sensors. The measured experimental value of heat transfer data at stagnation point was compared with theoretical value estimated Fay and Riddell correlation. As angle of rotation was increased from ϕ = 0° to ϕ = 180°, the shock wave became closer to model surface due to high density ratio across the shock wave and consequently heat transfer rate became higher.