PAMM · Proc. Appl. Math. Mech. 12, 531 – 532 (2012) / DOI 10.1002/pamm.

201210254

A VOF Method for Isobaric Expandable Flows

Illya Shevchuk1,∗ , Philipp Rauschenberger2 , and Johannes Janicka1
1
Institute of Energy and Power Plant Technology, Petersenstr. 32, 64287 Darmstadt
2
Insitute of Aerospace Thermodynamics, Pfaffenwaldring 31, 70569 Stuttgart

In this paper a method is described to simulate isobaric multiphase flows at low Mach numbers with steep temperature gradi-
ents for fluids with non-negligible thermal expansivity. Governing equations and solution procedure are outlined. Further, a
test case is shown in order to verify the model. Single phase natural convection flows with large temperature differences and
either constant or temperature dependent transport properties were simulated to prove the solution of coupled Navier-Stokes
and energy equations.
c 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

1 Introduction
Near the critical point properties of liquids and gases are strongly dependent on temperature and pressure. Thus, assumptions
of constant phase-intensive density, viscosity, heat conductivity, etc., typically made in multiphase simulations cannot be made
for these problems. In this study, however, focus is put on low Mach number flows with constant mean pressure and steep
temperature gradients. This allows several assumptions to reduce the complexity of the problem. Hence, heat production
by viscous friction, heat transfer by radiation and the dependency of fluid properties on pressure is neglected while their
dependency on temperature is taken into account.
Using the OpenFOAM toolbox, a solver was created that is capable to capture such near critical phenomena as thermal
expansivity and variable material properties, adopting a Volume of Fluid (VOF) [3] based method to capture the position of
the gas-liquid interface.

2 Governing equations
For an appropriate solution of the investigated multiphase problem, temporal interface position and shape development have
to be obtained. To capture the interface, a VOF-like approach by Weller [8] is used, describing the interfacial position and
morphology through an indicator function α1 corresponding to the volume fraction α of the disperse phase denoted here
by “1”. Instead of the sharp interface reconstruction, typical for VOF methods, the interface is described as a smooth region
adopting the Multi Fluid methodology [2], by which coexistence of phases in the interface region, carrying their own properties
as well as velocities, is allowed [7, 8].
Assuming both fluids to be Newtonian, using the Continuum Surface Force model [1] for surface tension in combination
with the contour based interface reconstruction [5] to obtain the interface curvature κ, having the gravity g as single body
force, subtracting the hydrostatic pressure to simplify the prescription of pressure boundary conditions
p∗ = p − ρg · x (1)
and decomposing the disperse phase velocity U1 into the mean flow velocity U and the relative velocity Ur yields the final
system of governing equations for the continuity of each phase i (2), momentum (3), volume fraction of the disperse phase (4)
and energy (5) are stated in their single field representation, i.e. valid for the entire flow domain.
∂t (αi ρi ) + ∇ · (αi ρi Ui ) = 0 (2)
∂t (ρU) + ∇ · (ρUU) − ∇ · µ ∇U + ∇UT − 2/3 (∇ · U) I = −∇p∗ + g · x∇ρ + σκ∇α1
 
(3)
∂t α1 + ∇ · (α1 U) − ∇ · (α1 (1 − α1 )Ur )) = α1 /ρ1 Dt ρ1 (4)
∂t (ρcp T ) + ∇ · (ρcp T U) − ∇ · (λ∇T ) = 0 (5)
Here ρ, U, p, µ, cp , T , λ and I represent the mean flow density, velocity, pressure, kinematic viscosity, heat capacity,
temperature, thermal conductivity and identity tensor, respectively. The Marangoni surface force is neglected in this study and
the surface tension coefficient σ is assumed to be constant.
To close the problem, the volume weighted mixing rule is applied for the mixture density ρ, viscosity µ, thermal conduc-
tivity λ and velocity U; the mass weighted mixing rule is used for the specific heat capacity cp of the mixture. Incompressible
thermal equations of state (EOS) of the form ρi = ρi (T ) are required to account for thermal expansivities.
∗ Corresponding author: e-mail shevchuk@ekt.tu-darmstadt.de, phone +49 6151 16 2770, fax +49 6151 16 5085

c 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

532 Section 11: Interfacial flows

Nu constant transport properties

8.91
simulation
∇T=0 air 8.89 reference
rising hot 8.87
momentum prediction
density update (EOS)

fluid
pressure correction
mesh

energy transport
g 8.85

VOF transport
coarse mid fine
Th Tc

continuity
Nu Sutherland s law
falling 8.8
time step time step cold fluid simulation
start end 8.75 reference
∇T=0 8.7
Fig. 1: Schematical representation of solution Fig. 2: Simulational setup 8.65 mesh
coarse mid fine
sequence in a timestep of cavity flow test case
Fig. 3: Cavity flow test case: mean
Nusselt number on the heated wall

3 Solution procedure
The system of Eqs. (2-5) is discretized on general unstructured meshes with collocated cell arrangement using the finite
volume method. It is solved using an iterative segregated solution approach (Fig. 1). Arrangement of equations in two-level
outer iteration loops represents a flexible and real time adjustable merge of SIMPLE-type and PISO algorithms, which allows
to tune the solver according to the particular case and provides a possibility to under-relax equations and fields in case of
algorithm instability. Momentum prediction and pressure correction method as well as discretization techniques described
in [7] are applied on Eq. (3). A significant difference from the incompressible formulation is the non-divergence-free velocity
field. Since the velocity divergence is required for the pressure correction step, it is obtained by rearranging and summing up
Eq. (2) over both phases. The disperse phase VOF equation (4) is solved using the Multidimensional Universal Limiter with
Explicit Solution (MULES), based on [9] and implemented in OpenFOAM. Careful discretization of convection terms [4, 7]
and semi-implicit sign dependent formulation of source terms [8] is important to provide a bounded solution.

4 Validation test
Gravity driven natural convection flow is often used for the validation of solvers designed for heat transfer applications. A
reference solution for a natural convection in a heated cavity was provided by Le Quéré et al. [6] for low Mach number flows
with strong coupling between mass, energy and momentum transport. This single phase reference case allows separating the
impact of the expansivity from the effects arising from interface modeling. It was chosen for validation of our solver because
the flow, investigated in this study, is also characterized by high thermal expansivity and low mach numbers.
A schematical representation of the test case is shown in Fig. 2. Two cases with either constant or temperature dependent
material properies were investigated, described by the Rayleigh number Ra = 106 and the non dimensional temperature
ϑ = 0.6 (for detailed description see [6]). Perfect gas EOS with constant pressure was used for density.
The computational domain was initialized with the mean temperature and uniform VOF field α1 = 1. Transient simulations
on coarse, mid and fine grids (2562 , 5122 and 10242 cells respectively) were performed until a steady state was reached. The
time step size was limited to a maximum of Courant number Co = 1. Simulations involving both constant and temperature
dependent transport properties showed good convergence towards the reference solutions, given in form of the mean Nusselt
number (Fig. 3). The VOF field was not disturbed by the density changes and stayed unity in the entire domain.

5 Conclusions
On basis of the OpenFOAM toolbox a new VOF based two-phase solver was implemented, which allows to account for
temperature dependent properties and thermal expansivity. First verification tests show a good accordance to the reference
cases, but still, further validation is needed to prove the applicability to the near critical multiphase flows.

References
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c 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

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