Numerical simulations of negatively buoyant jets in an immiscible fluid using the Particle Finite Element Method

Negatively buoyant jets consist in a dense fluid injected vertically upward into a lighter ambient fluid. The numerical simulation of this kind of buoyancy‐driven flows is challenging as it involves multiple fluids with different physical properties. In the case of immiscible fluids, it requires, in addition, to track the motion of the interface between fluids and accurately represent the discontinuities of the flow variables. In this paper, we investigate numerically the injection of a negatively buoyant jet into a homogenous immiscible ambient fluid using the Particle Finite Element Method and compare the two‐dimensional numerical results with experiments on the injection of a jet of dyed water through a nozzle in the base of a cylindrical tank containing rapeseed oil. In both simulations and experiments, the fountain inlet flow velocity and nozzle diameter have been varied to cover a wide range of Froude Fr and Reynolds Re numbers ( 0.1 < Fr < 30, 8 < Re < 1350), reproducing both weak and strong laminar fountains. The flow behaviors observed for the different numerical simulations fit in the regime map based on the Re and Fr values of the experiments, and the maximum fountain height is in good agreement with the experimental observations, suggesting that particle finite element method is a useful tool for the study of immiscible two‐fluid systems. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.