A method for simulating interfacial mass transfer on arbitrary meshes

Abstract

This paper presents a method for modeling interfacial mass transfer in Interface Capturing simulations of two-phase flow with a phase change. The model enables mechanistic prediction of the local rate of the phase change at the vapor–liquid interface on arbitrary computational meshes and is applicable to realistic cases involving two-phase mixtures with large density ratios. The simulation methodology is based on the volume of fluid representation of the flow, whereby an interfacial region in which mass transfer occurs is implicitly identified by a phase indicator, in this case the volume fraction of liquid, which varies from the value pertaining to the “bulk” liquid to the value of the bulk vapor. The novel methodology proposed here has been implemented using the Finite Volume framework and solution methods typical of “industrial” computational fluid dynamics practice. The proposed methodology for capturing mass transfer is applicable to arbitrary meshes without the need to introduce elaborate but artificial smearing of the mass transfer term as is often done in other techniques. The method has been validated via comparison with analytical solutions for planar interface evaporation and bubble growth test cases and against experimental observations of steam bubble growth.