The WAF scheme for the isentropic drift-flux model of compressible two-phase flows

Abstract

This paper focuses on the extension of the Weighted Average Flux (WAF) scheme for the numerical simulation of two-phase gas–liquid flow by imposing velocity equilibrium and without mechanical equilibrium of the transient drift-flux model. The model becomes a hyperbolic system of conservation laws with realistic closure relations where both phases are strongly coupled during their motion. Exploiting this, the drift-flux model discretization, simulation and investigation becomes very fast, simple and robust. The efficiency of the WAF scheme as being a second order in space and time without data reconstruction have been demonstrated in the published literature for compressible single-phase flows. However, the scheme is rarely applied to compressible two-phase flows. Based on a recent and complete exact Riemann solver for the drift-flux model, the model is numerically solved by the WAF scheme. The numerical algorithm accuracy and ability are validated through different published test cases. It is shown that the proposed scheme can be effectively employed to simulate two-phase flows involving discontinuities such as shocks and interfaces. The proposed WAF scheme is also compared with other numerical methods. Simulation results show appropriate agreement of WAF scheme even with the exact solutions. Comparisons of the presented simulations demonstrate that the behaviour of WAF scheme is encouraging, more accurate and fast than other numerical methods.