On the Validity of Heleshaw

Approximation in multiphase flows

- Presentation for final semester

Ahandeep Manna
BITS Pilani, Hyderabad
(under guidance of Dr Prasad Perlekar)

May, 2018
 Content
1)Introduction
2)Problem statement
3)Numerical Formulations
4)Errors found
5)Solutions
6)Future Work
 What is Hele-Shaw flow?

●
Heleshaw flow is defined as the flow of a liquid between
two parallel flat plates kept at an infinitesimal distance from
each other .
●
The governing equations turn out to be mathematically
similiar to inviscid potential flow and the flow of fluid
through a porous medium(Darcy’s Law)
 Approximating as a 2D flow
●
The major assumption of Hele-Shaw flow is that
the velocity in the confining direction can be
neglected
●
And the velocities in the non confining direction
can be uncoupled in the following way.
●

●
This can be derived using scaling arguments
●
The profile of pressure is assumed to be
that of a Hagen-Poiseuille flow .
●
Assuming steady state and h << L
●
plugging in the scaling arguments in the N.S equation we
get:

●
Hence it is seen pressure is not a function of z and as a
result the velocities can be decoupled into the desired
form .
●
now taking the gap average integral over h(z direction)
we arrive at

●
the advantage now being the u_a is independent of z
while holding onto the x,y dependencies.
●
Gap averaging navier stokes equation and substituting
the gap average velocity :

,Where v is gap
averaged velocity
●
We arrive at the gap averaged NS equation(for heleshaw flow) :

●
Where v is the gap averaged velocity vector .
●
Here the gradient is a 2-D gradient with the extra term
representing the drag force felt by the body .
●
The interesting fact in Hele-Shaw flow is that the velocity(in
steady state) is the gradient of a scalar(pressure) similar to a
potential flow .
Reasons to doubt H.S approx
in 2 Phase flows
 Solution of 2 Phase Systems
●
The two fluids will have 2 different set of N.S eqs.
●
Instead the whole domain is taken as a single fluid
with a volume fraction field used to modify densities
and viscosity .
●
The volume of fluid method is used to solve 2 phase
systems numerically.
 The modified NS becomes
●
The additional term on the rhs is surface tension

●
T is the volume fraction field defined as the volume integral
of a parameter alpha over the cell volume . Other than the
interface it is taken to be 0 for one and 1 for the other liquid .
●
The interface is evolved in time by advecting the Volume
fraction field using the fluid velocity .
●
 Modelling of surface tension
numerically

●
IN the Continuous Surface Force model H is replaced by T (volume
fraction)
●
The characteristic interface thickness is taken to be the grid size
●
Various methods such as CSF, Level set method Ghost Fluid method are
used to approximate surface tension.
 Errors arising due to C.S.F
Implementation
●
In the original implementation of CSF in gerris curvature used
in Calculation of Surface tension used:

●
This lead to development of parasitic currents in velocity field
and poor estimates of curvature which worsens with mesh
refinement.
●
Lead to abnormal perturbations in volume fraction field,
opening up of droplet as it directly interacted with the wall both
in 2D and 3D.
Instabilities in 2D
 Instabilities in 3D

Disintegration of bubble
 Height Functions
●
To resolve these numerical imbalances height functions were
used in the computations of normals and curvature.
●
7x3 stencil in 2D:
 3D
●
7x3x3 stensil used
Implementation of Height
functions
 Contact Angle Test
●
Contact Angle test done with an initial
angle of 70.52 . Two cases simulated with
150 and 30 contact angle respectively .
●
KE plot

In both cases the droplet comes to

an equilibrium shape while
maintaining the boundary contact
angle.
 Next Step
●
Simulate 3D flows using 2D simulation by adding an
explicit drag term due to the wall.
●
However the 2D data will be volume averaged data.
Hence suitable averaging of the 3D simulation data
will be needed to compare 2D vs 3D case.
●
The more interesting result would be that till what
Reynolds number the Hele-Shaw approximation
holds reasonably.
 Subjects Not discussed in the
presentation
●
Numerical scheme of gerris
●
Algorithm for implementing Height
functions and identifying contact angle
cells.
Thank you