Volume of Fluid Simulations of Copper Droplet Splat and Sensitivity to Modeling Methods

Abstract

Abstract Liquid droplet interactions with solid surfaces are fundamental to a wide range of phenomena from novel manufacturing processes, ice accretion on surfaces, to ablation and fouling build-up when droplets are carried with fluid flow along a flow path. Computational fluid-dynamics based simulations offer a controlled environment in which to explore the details of the droplet motion, deformation, or break-up and solidification and melting as droplet impingement on a surface occurs. The operating, material, or geometric conditions can be altered and the resulting changes in the droplet related phenomena can be used to gain the information needed to control the droplet related processes for an intended purpose. The present work investigates the sensitivity of the predicted splat development as a single copper droplet impact upon a cool copper substrate to variations in a volume of fluid based computational modeling method. One liquid copper droplet is assigned an initial velocity and temperature and is set to impact a cold solid copper surface. The splat profile, as time progresses, is compared to the results in the literature. Among the computational modeling method changes investigated are the surface tension treatment, the solution method for the volume fraction equation, the volume fraction time sub-step calculation method, the volume fraction cut-off value and Courant number, the frequency of the volume fraction updates, the volume fraction discretization method, the mushy zone parameter, and mesh refinement. The study results can be used to provide information to aid in the generation of the models that can more accurately interrogate droplet-surface interactions.