A coupled level set/volume of fluid method for simulation of two-phase flow on unstructured grids

Abstract

We present a fully coupled level set and volume of fluid method for free surface flow simulations on unstructured grids in two- and three-dimensions. The evolution of the level set function and the volume fraction are updated at each time step. The level set advection equation is solved by a least squares weighted residual method while the volume fraction advection is solved using an unsplit Eulerian-Lagrangian scheme. The reconstruction of the interface in the volume of fluid method is performed using the volume fraction information together with the normal vector obtained from the level set function. The reconstructed interface is then used to reinitialize the level set function. Thanks to the fully coupling of the two methods, the interface reconstruction is carried out efficiently and the mass conservation is preserved exactly. The proposed method is validated against several benchmarks and is coupled with the incompressible Navier-Stokes solver to solve two-phase flow problems. Numerical results show that the method is capable of resolving complex interface changes efficiently and accurately.