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Coupled Level Set and Volume of Fluid method in OpenFoam with application to
compressible two-Phase flow.

Conference Paper · June 2014

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 A Coupled Level Set and Volume of Fluid Method with
Application to Compressible Two-Phase Flow
M. Jadidi, M. Tembely, S. Moghtadernejad, A. Dolatabadi
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Email: ali.dolatabadi@concordia.ca
ABSTRACT
A simple coupling of Volume of Fluid (VOF) and
Level Set (LS) methods with application in
compressible gas-liquid two-phase flow is presented.
The LS method is added to the compressible VOF
solver in OpenFoam, which is a CFD Open source
solver library, to improve the computation of interface
curvature and surface tension force. The results of this
method and compressible VOF solver are compared
for a test case. It is shown that the interface curvature
and the surface tension force computations are
considerably improved by adding LS method to the
compressible VOF solver.
1. INTRODUCTION
Gas-liquid two-phase flows are widely observed in
nature; for instance in ocean waves, and raindrops
falling. In addition, gas-liquid two-phase flows are
used in various industrial applications such as spray,
atomization and droplet combustion. It is clear that
when the liquid phase interacts with a compressible
gas medium, the problem becomes more complex.
Some examples include the breakup of liquid jets in
subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flows, underwater
explosions, and shock-induced mixing of liquids [1,
2]. To model such problems, three main approaches
are available. Choosing the appropriate approach
depends on the physics of the problem. In the first
approach, both phases are considered as
incompressible and the fully incompressible Navier-
Stokes equations are used to solve the problem. In the
second approach, the gas and liquid phases behave as
compressible and incompressible respectively. Finally
in the third approach, both phases behave as
compressible. It should be noted that in the second and
third approaches, the compressible Navier-Stokes
equations with different equations of state for each
phase are usually used. In this study, the focus is on
the second approach where gas and liquid are treated
as compressible and incompressible, respectively.
Level Set (LS) and Volume of Fluid (VOF) methods
are the most popular numerical approaches used to
predict interface motion [3, 4]. In the LS method, the
free surface is represented by a smooth function (level
set function(𝜙)). The interface is captured by the zero
level set, while the positive and negative values of
level set function define liquid and gas regions
respectively [3]. It is proved that mass loss is the main
drawback of the LS method [5]. In other words, the
mass enclosed by zero level set is not conserved.
However, the precise capturing and evaluation of the
curvature of the free surface is the main advantage of
the LS method [3, 5]. On the other hand, it is possible
to capture the interface by VOF method which is based
on the cell volume fraction (𝛼) [4]. The interface is
defined where the volume fraction is between 0 and 1.
The region with the volume fraction equal to one is full
of liquid while the region with the zero volume
fractions is full of gas. It should be mentioned that the
main advantage of VOF method is the mass
conservation [5]. Nevertheless, reconstructing the
interface is very complex in VOF method [6, 7]. It
should be noted that the interface is smeared rapidly
over at least three or four mesh cells (diffusion error)
and curvature calculation from volume fraction is very
difficult [6, 7]. Thus, the interface curvature and the
surface tension force are difficult to be modeled
correctly, which affect the interface shape [8]. By
coupling of level set and volume of fluid methods
(CLSVOF) [5], the resulting method benefits from the
advantages of both VOF and LS methods. In other
words, in CLSVOF approach, the mass conservation
property of VOF is combined with the interface
smoothness property of LS.
In this paper, an algorithm for coupling of VOF and
LS is presented. The goal is to improve the
computation of surface tension force and interface
curvature in compressibleInterFoam solver in  i
 .(  iU i )  0
OpenFoam [9]. t

2. THE ALGORITHM For incompressible fluid the equation of phase

The VOF method is used in OpenFoam to track the
interface of gas-liquid multiphase flow [9]. In the
Ph.D. thesis of Rusche [10] supplementary details of
implementation of the VOF method in OpenFoam can
be found. The governing equations solved in
compressible VOF (compressibleInterFoam) are given
below:
Continuity equation:

 .( U )  0
t
continuity is given by:
 i
 .( iU i )  0
t
To prevent smearing of the interface, an extra artificial
compression term is defined in the volume fraction
equation, and at the same time, avoids the interface
reconstruction. This artificial term should be active
only at the interface region. Therefore, the above
equation can be rearranged as:

Momentum equation: 1

 .(1U )  .(1 (1  1 )U r )  0
t
U 2
 .( UU )  ( P  .U )  where velocity U is defined as U  1U1   2U 2 and a
t 3
relative velocity U r is defined as U r  U1  U 2 .
[.( U )  U . ]   g   1  1
For compressible flow, we have:

where  is the surface tension,  is the curvature of  i  D i

 .( iU i )   i .
the free surface and 1 is the phase fraction of phase t i Dt
1. It should be noted that curvature of the free surface
is calculated from the phase fraction  1 as
The relation between density and pressure can be
rewritten as:
D i DP
 i
 1  Dt Dt
  .  
 1 
Then we have:
Equation of state:
 i   DP
i  oi  i P  .( iU i )   i i .
t i Dt

where the subscript i denotes the phase i and  i is the The velocity U can be calculated as:
compressibility i  1 ci 2
 and ci here is the speed
      DP
of sound. For a compressible phase (i.e. gas) the .U    1 1  2 2 
nominal density 𝜌0 is set to zero which leads to an  1  2  Dt
ideal gas equation of state for an isothermal fluid,
where   1 / RT . For the low compressibility phase Then the volume fraction equation of a compressible
(i.e. liquid) 𝜌0 is set to the nominal density of the flow can be written as:
liquid under normal conditions. Therefore, a constant
1
liquid density is used unless the liquid is subjected to  .(1U1 )  .(1 (1  1 )U r ) 
very high pressures. t
1 (1  1 )  1U
Volume fraction equation:
where
The continuity equation for each of the phases is as DP
follows:   ( 2  2  1 1 )
Dt
we also have:
1   2  1
The MULES (multidimensional universal limiter with
explicit solution) method is used to solve the volume
fraction advection equation [11].
In VOF method, both fluids are treated as a single fluid
mixture whose properties change in space based on the
volume fraction of each phase:
  1 1   2  2
  11   2 2
To add the interface smoothness property of LS to the
VOF method, an algorithm for coupling LS and VOF
is going to be explained here. In this strategy, although
the volume fraction field and the level set functions are
defined, but only the volume fraction advection
equation is solved [8]. The level set function is
initialized in each time step using the advected volume
fraction [8]. Based on the work of Albadawi et al. [8],
the volume fraction which equals to 0.5, is defined as
the initial zero level set, as below:
𝜙0 = 1.5 ∆𝑥 (𝛼 − 0.5)
where ∆𝑥 is the mesh size.
This initial level set function has the positive and
negative values in the liquid and the gas regions. The
next step is solving the re-initialization equation with
a pseudo time (τ) in order to assign the level set
function to a signed distance function [3, 8]:
𝜕𝜙
= 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛(𝜙0 )(1 − |∇𝜙|)
𝜕𝜏
Computing the interface normal, and curvature 𝜅 by
the level set method is simple and accurate [3]. These
parameters are calculated as follows:
(∇𝜙)
𝑛=
|(∇𝜙)|
𝜅 = ∇. 𝑛
Therefore, the surface tension force is computed as:
𝐹𝜎 = 𝜎𝜅(𝜙)𝛿(𝜙)∇𝜙
where 𝛿 is Dirac function which is defined as:
0, |𝜙| > 𝜖
𝛿(𝜙) = { 1 𝜋𝜙
(1 + cos ( )) , |𝜙| ≤ 𝜖
2𝜖 𝜖 To expose the initial condition, a semi-spherical
The fluxes and the material properties such as density
and viscosity are calculated based on the following
Heaviside function:
0, 𝜙 < −𝜖
1 𝜙 1 𝜋𝜙
𝐻(𝜙) = (1 + + 𝑠𝑖𝑛 ( )) , |𝜙| ≤ 𝜖
2 𝜖 𝜋 𝜖
{ 1, 𝜙>𝜖
Then we have:
𝜌(𝜙) = 𝜌𝑔 + (𝜌𝑙 − 𝜌𝑔 )𝐻
𝜇(𝜙) = 𝜇𝑔 + (𝜇𝑙 − 𝜇𝑔 )𝐻
The PIMPLE scheme is used to couple pressure and
velocity.
3. BENCHMARK TESTS
In this study, we assess our method based on a 2D
bubble growth and detachment bench mark problem.
Additionally our method is compared with the
compressible VOF method available in OpenFoam,
which shows improvement for capturing the interface
curvature and the surface tension force computations.
It should be noted that the gravity force is considered
in the mentioned problem. Also, the physical
properties of the fluids (air and water) are assumed to
be constant.
3.1 Bubble growth and detachment
The problem of bubble growth and detachment was
numerically and experimentally studied by Albadawi
et al. [8]. However, they assumed two isothermal,
incompressible fluids for their numerical simulation.
The objective of this part of the present work is to
simulate the same problem by considering the
compressibility effects. A 3D geometry is used for the
simulation in the present work. The schematic diagram
of the numerical domain can be seen in Figure 1.
During the process, gas comes out of an orifice and
forms a bubble. Within time the bubble volume
increases continuously. However, the lift force causes
the bubble to detach and rise upwards [12]. A
parabolic velocity profile is assumed at the air inlet for
the boundary condition. The maximum velocity in the
parabolic velocity profile is calculated based on the air
flow rate [8]. The air flow rate is equal to 200 mlph.
For the lower wall, the adhesion boundary condition is
used to prevent bubble interface spreading along the
wall. The wall static contact angle is set to 20° while
no slip boundary condition is used for the other walls.
bubble at the inflow is patched so that the distance
function for LS method can be calculated. The Courant
number of 0.25 with adaptive time step is used to
control the computations. It should be mentioned that
the simulation presented in this paper follows the
numerical and experimental work of Albadawi et al.
[8]. Therefore, our results are compared with the
experimental data available in reference [8] to validate
our code.

Figure 1 Schematic diagram of the problem of bubble

growth and detachment.

The comparison between the experimental

measurements are shown in Figure 2 [8]. It is worth
noting that the numerical interfaces are obtained from
compressible VOF and CLSVOF. As can be seen in
Figure 2, the VOF method predicts the bubble with
smaller volume and height. On the other hand, the
CLSVOF results are in good agreement with
experimental data. The bubble detachment time
resulting from the experiment, VOF, and CLSVOF are
0.523, 0.327 and 0.421 s respectively. It is clear that
the computations of interface curvature and surface
tension force are improved by CLSVOF.
Figure 2 Bubble shape predictions by experimental, VOF
and CLSVOF for the problem of bubble growth and
detachment.
4. CONCLUSION
A simple coupling of compressibleInterFoam (VOF)
solver in OpenFoam and Level Set (LS) method is
presented to improve the computations of interface
curvature and surface tension force. A benchmark test
(bubble growth and detachment) is used to show the
differences between the results of this method and
compressible VOF solver. It is evident that the
interface curvature and the surface tension force
computations are prominently improved by adding LS
method to the compressible VOF solver.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial
support of the National Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
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