Numerical Study of Bubble Rising Motion in a Vertical Wedge-Shaped Channel Based on a Modified Level Set Method

Abstract

A modified level set method coupled with local-reinitialized process and volume-corrected method is employed to simulate bubble motions in complex channels. The volume-corrected process helps to adjust the mass loss due to bubble simulation by standard level set method and local reinitialization of level set function eliminates the numerical dissipation due to nonorthogonality of the boundary mesh. For solving the problem of two-phase flow with a complex boundary, the mesh generation is employed in the physical plane in body-fitted coordinates. All parameters in the physical domain are transformed into a computational domain, where the governing equations are discretized on collocated grids using the finite volume method and the SIMPLE algorithm to decouple the velocities and the pressure. The continuum surface force model is employed to deal with the surface tension of bubbles. By simulating bubble rising in a wedge-shaped channel, the method is demonstrated to be effective to solve the bubble motion in a complex physical plane.