DPD simulation of multiphase flow at small scales

Small scale multiphase fluid motion is fundamentally important for applications in environmental, biological and chemical engineering as well as many other areas. Due to the existence of complex geometries, arbitrarily moving interfaces, and large density and viscosity contrast, simulation of small scale multiphase flows has been a formidable task for traditional grid-based numerical methods. This paper presents the application of a meso-scale, Lagrangian particle method, dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), for simulating multiphase fluid flows. For multiple component multiphase flows, with properly selected coefficients, the conventional DPD model can be directly used. For single component multiphase flows, the conservative weight function describing DPD particle-particle interactions has to be modified to model the existing liquid-gas phases. The effectiveness of the DPD model in simulating multiphase flows has been demonstrated by two numerical examples of twocomponent two phase flow, and one-component two phase flow. ©2010 IEEE

A note on the consistency of Hybrid Eulerian/Lagrangian approach to multiphase flows

The aim of the present paper is to introduce and to discuss inconsistencies errors that may arise when Eulerian and Lagrangian models are coupled for the simulations of turbulent poly-dispersed two-phase flows. In these hydrid models, two turbulence models are in fact implicitely used at the same time and it is essential to check that they are consistent, in spite of their apparent different formulations. This issue appears in particular in the case of very-small particles, or tracer-limit particles, and it is shown that coupling inconsistent turbulence models (Eulerian and Lagrangian) can result in non-physical results, notably for second-order fluid velocity moments. This problem is illustrated by some computations for fluid particles in a turbulent channel flow using several coupling strategies.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Direct Numerical Simulation of Complex Multi-Fluid Flows Using a Combined Volume of Fluid and Immersed Boundary Method

In this paper a simulation model is presented for the Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of complex multi-fluid flows in which simultaneously (moving) deformable (drops or bubbles) and non-deformable (moving) elements (particles) are present, possibly with the additional presence of free surfaces. Our model combines the VOF model developed by van Sint Annaland et al. (2005) and the Immersed Boundary (IB) model developed by van der Hoef et al. (2006). The Volume of Fluid (VOF) part features i) an interface reconstruction technique based on piecewise linear interface representation ii) a three-dimensional version of the CSF model of Brackbill et al. (1992). The Immersed Boundary (IB) part incorporates both particle-fluid and particle-particle interaction via a Direct Forcing Method (DFM) and a hard sphere Discrete Particle (DP) approach. In our model a fixed (Eulerian) grid is utilized to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for the entire computational domain. The no-slip condition at the surface of the moving particles is enforced via a momentum source term which only acts in the vicinity of the particle surface. For the enforcement of the no-slip condition Lagrangian force points are used which are distributed evenly over the surface of the particle. Dissipative particle-particle and/or particle-wall collisions are accounted via a hard sphere DP approach (Hoomans et al., 1996) using a three-parameter particle-particle interaction model accounting for normal and tangential restitution and tangential friction. The capabilities of the hybrid VOF-IB model are demonstrated with a number of examples in which complex topological changes in the interface are encountered

Smoothed Dissipative Particle Dynamics model for mesoscopic multiphase flows in the presence of thermal fluctuations

Thermal fluctuations cause perturbations of fluid-fluid interfaces and highly nonlinear hydrodynamics in multiphase flows. In this work, we develop a novel multiphase smoothed dissipative particle dynamics model. This model accounts for both bulk hydrodynamics and interfacial fluctuations. Interfacial surface tension is modeled by imposing a pairwise force between SDPD particles. We show that the relationship between the model parameters and surface tension, previously derived under the assumption of zero thermal fluctuation, is accurate for fluid systems at low temperature but overestimates the surface tension for intermediate and large thermal fluctuations. To analyze the effect of thermal fluctuations on surface tension, we construct a coarse-grained Euler lattice model based on the mean field theory and derive a semi-analytical formula to directly relate the surface tension to model parameters for a wide range of temperatures and model resolutions. We demonstrate that the present method correctly models the dynamic processes, such as bubble coalescence and capillary spectra across the interface