An improvement of interface computation of incompressible two-phase flows based on coupling volume of fluid with level-set methods

Abstract

ABSTRACTA coupling technique for interface simulations applied to the fields of ship hydrodynamics and multiphase flow computations is presented. The technique takes advantages of mass conservation property of the volume-of-fluid method and sharpened interface computation of the Level-Set approach. An improved scheme for the gradient computation of the Level-Set function during re-initialisation is also introduced. A solver with the present coupling is built into the interFoam solver of the OpenFOAM platform. Three test cases, i.e. a free rising air bubble in still water, dam-break simulation with a hump in dry bed channel and free surface flow around a container ship are conducted to demonstrate the capability of the new solver. A good agreement between the simulated results and the benchmark and/or measured data shows the significant potential of the present technique in both academic research and practical applications.