An Eulerian, lattice-based cellular automata approach for modeling multiphase flows

Abstract

Commonly found in nature and engineering, multiphase flows contain interacting media of different phases. Traditionally, there have been two ways to model such flows. First, the Eulerian–Eulerian approach, in which the phases are modeled as interpenetrating continua, is computationally efficient but does not provide the discrete particle locations. Second, in the Eulerian–Lagrangian approach, the dispersed phase is treated as individual particles interacting with a fluid continuum. However, this approach is computationally demanding, especially for flows containing a large number of particles. The current work introduces an Eulerian–Lagrangian approach to modeling multiphase flows, in which the particles are modeled using lattice-based cellular automata (CA). The fluid is modeled as a continuum while particles are modeled on a lattice which allows them to evolve spatially and temporally. Thus, this work examines the feasibility of the Eulerian-CA approach for modeling multiphase flows while achieving significant speedups in computational times.