Numerical approximation of a phase-field surfactant model with fluid flow

Modelling interfacial dynamics with soluble surfactants in a multiphase system is a challenging task. Here, we consider the numerical approximation of a phase-field surfactant model with fluid flow. The nonlinearly coupled model consists of two Cahn-Hilliard-type equations and incompressible Navier-Stokes equation. With the introduction of two auxiliary variables, the governing system is transformed into an equivalent form, which allows the nonlinear potentials to be treated efficiently and semi-explicitly. By certain subtle explicit-implicit treatments to stress and convective terms, we construct first and second-order time marching schemes, which are extremely efficient and easy-to-implement, for the transformed governing system. At each time step, the schemes involve solving only a sequence of linear elliptic equations, and computations of phase-field variables, velocity and pressure are fully decoupled. We further establish a rigorous proof of unconditional energy stability for the first-order scheme. Numerical results in both two and three dimensions are obtained, which demonstrate that the proposed schemes are accurate, efficient and unconditionally energy stable. Using our schemes, we investigate the effect of surfactants on droplet deformation and collision under a shear flow, where the increase of surfactant concentration can enhance droplet deformation and inhibit droplet coalescence

Unconditionally Energy Stable Linear Schemes for a Two-Phase Diffuse Interface Model with Peng-Robinson Equation of State

Many problems in the fields of science and engineering, particularly in materials science and fluid dynamic, involve flows with multiple phases and components. From mathematical modeling point of view, it is a challenge to perform numerical simulations of multiphase flows and study interfaces between phases, due to the topological changes, inherent nonlinearities and complexities of dealing with moving interfaces. In this work, we investigate numerical solutions of a diffuse interface model with Peng-Robinson equation of state. Based on the invariant energy quadratization approach, we develop first and second order time stepping schemes to solve the liquid-gas diffuse interface problems for both pure substances and their mixtures. The resulting temporal semi-discretizations from both schemes lead to linear systems that are symmetric and positive definite at each time step, therefore they can be numerically solved by many efficient linear solvers. The unconditional energy stabilities in the discrete sense are rigorously proven, and various numerical simulations in two and three dimensional spaces are presented to validate the accuracies and stabilities of the proposed linear schemes