Time-dependent and outflow boundary conditions for Dissipative Particle Dynamics

Abstract

We propose a simple method to impose both no-slip boundary conditions at fluid–wall interfaces and at outflow boundaries in fully developed regions for Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) fluid systems. The procedure to enforce the no-slip condition is based on a velocity-dependent shear force, which is a generalized force to represent the presence of the solid–wall particles and to maintain locally thermodynamic consistency. We show that this method can be implemented in both steady and time-dependent fluid systems and compare the DPD results with the continuum limit (Navier–Stokes) results. We also develop a force-adaptive method to impose the outflow boundary conditions for fully developed flow with unspecified outflow velocity profile or pressure value. We study flows over the backward-facing step and in idealized arterial bifurcations using a combination of the two new boundary methods with different flow rates. Finally, we explore the applicability of the outflow method in time-dependent flow systems. The outflow boundary method works well for systems with Womersley number of O(1), i.e. when the pressure and flowrate at the outflow are approximately in-phase.