Surface Capturing in

Droplet Breakup and

Wall Interaction
Hrvoje Jasak
h.jasak@wikki.co.uk

Wikki Ltd. United Kingdom

12/Jan/2005

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.1/21

Outline
Objective
• Review surface capturing numerics in CFD
• Present Diesel jet breakup and droplet-wall
interaction results
Topics
• Mathematical model and numerics
• Preserving sharp interfaces
• Jet breakup and droplet-wall interaction

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.2/21

Background
Surface tension-dominated free surface flows
• Sometimes difficult to grasp experimentally
• Good free surface handling would allow
“DNS”-like simulations for detailed studies
Surface capturing model
• Ideal for flows with breaking waves
• Surface denoted by indicator variable
• Handles surface tension and wetting angle

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.3/21

Mathematical Model
Two-phase incompressible system
∂γ
+ ∇•(uγ) = 0
∂t
∇•u = 0
∂ρu
+ ∇•(ρuu) − ∇•σ = −∇p + ρf + σκ∇γ
∂t

u = γu1 + (1 − γ)u2
µ, ρ = γρ1 + (1 − γ)ρ2

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.4/21

Surface Capturing
Properties of γ equation
• No diffusion → sharp interface
• Numerics tends to artificially smear sharp
profiles: unacceptable loss of accuracy
• In reality, interface is sharp! Do we need
perfect numerics?
• Need bounded and sharp discretisation of the
∇•(uγ) in the γ-equation

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.5/21

VOF Approach
Classical VOF
• For partially filled cells, reconstruct interface
based on γ and ∇γ
• Decide on γ flux depending on flow direction
and orientation of interface

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.6/21

VOF Approach
Problems of classical VOF
• Discontinuous reconstructed interface
• Works well only on “hex-structured” meshes
• Specifications like “mainly parallel” and
“mainly normal” imprecise
• Potential boundedness problems

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.7/21

Compressive Schemes
Rationale
• VOF is an interface-compression method
• General (better) NVD-based bounded
compression schemes: CICSAM

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.8/21

Compressive Schemes
CICSAM scheme
• Combination of Ultimate Quickest and
Hyper-C using the NVD diagram
• Boundedness in γ is crucial: phase
conservation equation
• Simple compressive schemes tend to align
with the mesh: problems with curvature
• Seeking balance between good interface
resolution and parasitic currents

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.9/21

Parasitic Currents
• Interface compression = noise in ∇γ
• Worst for no mean flow and high ρ ratio

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.10/21

Multiphase Model
Two-phase Eulerian system
∂α
+ uα •∇α = 0
∂t
∂β
+ uβ •∇β = 0
∂t
yields
∂α
+ ∇•(uα) + ∇•[(uα − uβ )α(1 − α)] = 0
∂t

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.11/21

Multiphase Model
Compression term: ∇•[(uα − uβ )α(1 − α)]
• Term only appears on the interface, contains
(unknown) relative velocity
• Model ur = uα − uβ to compress the interface
• Both convection terms are bounded and
conservative: discretise with standard
bounded differencing (Gamma scheme)
• Interface compression comes from the new
term, not numerics! ur = f (∇γ)

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.12/21

Equation Coupling
Coupling through surface tension
• Surface tension term: σκ∇γ
• γ distribution depends on u and u-eqn
ˆ
depends on ∇•(∇γ)∇γ
• Highly non-linear, lagged (u − p − γ coupling),
totally dominant for small bubbles
• Wetting angle: fixed gradient condition on γ at
the wall patch, dependent on near-wall
velocity

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.13/21

Ligament Breakup
Capillary ligament breakup
• 20µm diameter ligament
• Initial surface perturbation determines mode
of breakup: large and small droplets
• No mean flow makes this hard to simulate

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.14/21

Capillary Jet
Ink-jet printer nozzle, 20µm diameter
• Pulsating flow, umean = 20m/s
• Tuning frequency (50kHz) and amplitude (5%)

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.15/21

Diesel Jet
LES of a Diesel Injector
• d = 0.2mm, high velocity and surface tension
• Mean injection velocity: 460m/s
• Diesel fuel injected into air, 5.2MPa, 900K
• Turbulent and subsonic flow, no cavitation
◦ 1-equation LES model with no free surface
correction
◦ Fully developed pipe flow inlet

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.16/21

Diesel Injector
LES of a Diesel injector
• Mesh size: 1.2 to 8 million CVs, aggressive
local refinement, 50k time-steps
• 6µs initiation time, 20µs averaging time

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.17/21

Droplet Impact
Droplet-wall interaction
• Series of preliminary calculations fo
droplet-wall impact
• Two droplet sizes: 0.5mm and 50µm
• Dry and wet wall (droplet-film interaction)
• Normal and oblique impact (900 , 45o , 70o )
• “Slow” (10m/s) and “fast” (100m/s) impact

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.18/21

Droplet Impact
Dry and wet normal splash

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.19/21

Further Studies
Experimental comparison
• Experimental data required for validation
◦ High-speed photography
◦ Detailed simulation parameters
◦ Multiple droplet impact
• Other relevant wall interaction cases

Surface Capturing in Droplet Breakup and Wall Interaction – p.20/21

Summary
Summary
• Free surface simulation methodology
implemented in FOAM
• Capable of handling dominant surface tension
• Need further experimental validation

Acknowledgements
• Spray breakup simulations: Eugene de Villiers, Imperial College
• Foam and OpenFOAM are released under GPL: http://www.openfoam.org

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