Fully discrete energy stable scheme for a phase-field moving contact line model with variable densities and viscosities

In this study, we propose a fully discrete energy stable scheme for the phase-field moving contact line model with variable densities and viscosities. The mathematical model comprises a Cahn–Hilliard equation, Navier–Stokes equation, and the generalized Navier boundary condition for the moving contact line. A scalar auxiliary variable is employed to transform the governing system into an equivalent form, thereby allowing the double well potential to be treated semi-explicitly. A stabilization term is added to balance the explicit nonlinear term originating from the surface energy at the fluid–solid interface. A pressure stabilization method is used to decouple the velocity and pressure computations. Some subtle implicit–explicit treatments are employed to deal with convention and stress terms. We establish a rigorous proof of the energy stability for the proposed time-marching scheme. A finite difference method based on staggered grids is then used to spatially discretize the constructed time-marching scheme. We also prove that the fully discrete scheme satisfies the discrete energy dissipation law. Our numerical results demonstrate the accuracy and energy stability of the proposed scheme. Using our numerical scheme, we analyze the contact line dynamics based on a shear flow-driven droplet sliding case. Three-dimensional droplet spreading is also investigated based on a chemically patterned surface. Our numerical simulation accurately predicts the expected energy evolution and it successfully reproduces the expected phenomena where an oil droplet contracts inward on a hydrophobic zone and then spreads outward rapidly on a hydrophilic zone.     

Mathematical Modeling and Simulation of Antibubble Dynamics

In this study, we propose a mathematical model and perform numerical simulations for the antibubble dynamics. An antibubble is a droplet of liquid surrounded by a thin film of a lighter liquid, which is also in a heavier surrounding fluid. The model is based on a phase-field method using a conservative Allen-Cahn equation with a space-time dependent Lagrange multiplier and a modified Navier-Stokes equation. In this model, the inner fluid, middle fluid and outer fluid locate in specific diffusive layer regions according to specific phase filed (order parameter) values. If we represent the antibubble with conventional binary or ternary phase-field models, then it is difficult to have stable thin film. However, the proposed approach can prevent nonphysical breakup of fluid film during the simulation. Various numerical tests are performed to verify the efficiency of the proposed model.     

Solvability of problems with degeneration: Imbibition of fluid in a porous medium

For a degenerate system of equations such as the equations of motion of immiscible fluids in porous media, we study the solvability of an initial–boundary value problem. Using the process of capillary imbibition of a wetting fluid as an example, we study a class of self-similar solutions with degeneration on the movable boundary and on the entry into the porous layer. The considered problem can be reduced to the analysis of properties of a nonlinear operator equation. For the classical solution of the original problem, we prove existence and uniqueness theorems.     

Radial spreading and stability of a thin rotating liquid droplet

Thin-film flows are involved in many coating processes, where it is desirable to achieve thin and homogeneous fluid layers. In the present investigations, we treat droplets, spreading on rotating solid substrates. Micro-scale effects appear, firstly, at the wetting front, where the film height tends to zero. Secondly, micro-scale effects may appear at other locations, where the free liquid/gas-interface approaches the solid substrate, as e.g. at film rupture. For such situations, molecular effects need to be considered, e.g. in form of the disjoining pressure (DJP), to get physically-correct solutions. Otherwise, the spreading can be modeled within the frame of continuum mechanics, augmented by the (empirical) law of Tanner to capture the contact-line dynamics. We present, on the one hand, an overview of several interesting issues, as (i) spreading with and without considering the DJP, (ii) spreading after central rupture, including hysteresis effects, and (iii) non-isothermal spreading, including temperature-dependent surface tension (Marangoni effect) and temperature-dependent density (Rayleigh-Bénard effect). On the other hand, we present results for the instability of the contact line, for which the contact line gets corrugated (under isothermal conditions). This instability goes along with a transition from (rotationally-symmetric) two-dimensional to three-dimensional behavior. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Analysis and experiments on the spreading dynamics of a viscoelastic drop

We study the spreading dynamics of a sessile viscoelastic drop on a horizontal surface, where a simplified Phan–Thien–Tanner (sPTT) model is considered to represent the rheology of viscoelastic drop. We have adopted a macroscopic approach to obtain the temporal evolution of the spreading drop, while to establish the efficacy of the theoretical model, we have validated the results obtained from the mathematical formulation with the experimental results for both the Newtonian (Si-oil) and viscoelastic (PDMS and aqueous solution of CMC and glycerin) drops. Following the framework of Seaver–Berg approximation, the spherical shape of the drop is assumed as a cylindrical disk here. We observe from this study that an increment in the elasticity of the fluid enhances the velocity gradient and increases the viscous dissipation in the drop volume, leading to a reduction in the spreading rate.     

A coupled NMM-SPH method for fluid-structure interaction problems

The main challenges in the numerical simulation of fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems include the solid fracture, the free surface fluid flow, and the interactions between the solid and the fluid. Aiming to improve the treatment of these issues, a new coupled scheme is developed in this paper. For the solid structure, the Numerical Manifold Method (NMM) is adopted, in which the solid is allowed to change from continuum to discontinuum. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, which is suitable for free interface flow problem, is used to model the motion of fluids. A contact algorithm is then developed to handle the interaction between NMM elements and SPH particles. Three numerical examples are tested to validate the coupled NMM-SPH method, including the hydrostatic pressure test, dam-break simulation and crack propagation of a gravity dam under hydraulic pressure. Numerical modeling results indicate that the coupled NMM-SPH method can not only simulate the interaction of the solid structure and the fluid as in conventional methods, but also can predict the failure of the solid structure.     

Regularization of a discrete scheme governing the three-dimensional evolution of a fluid-fluid interface

A regularized discrete scheme is developed that describes the three-dimensional evolution of the interface between fluids with different viscosities and densities in the Leibenzon-Muskat model. The regularization is achieved by smoothing the kernel of the singular integral involved in the differential equation governing the moving interface. The discrete scheme is tested by solving the problem of a drop of one fluid evolving in a translational flow of another.     

On Two‐Phasic Flow Problems in Elasto‐Plastic Porous Materials

In the present contribution, the formulation of the governing equations of coupled flow and deformation processes in porous materials is based on the well‐founded Theory of Porous Media (TPM) [2, 3]. Embedded in this concept, the model under consideration represents a triphasic medium of a cohesive‐frictional elasto‐plastic solid skeleton and a binary pore‐fluid, which is composed of a materially incompressible wetting phase (here water) and a materially compressible non‐wetting phase (here air). The unsaturated domain (saturation in terms of liquid saturation) of the porous medium is included in the model by the application of a suitable capillary‐pressure‐saturation relation, which takes into account the interaction of the solid skeleton and the two pore‐fluids. Furthermore, the interaction is described by Darcy's filter law including a relative permeability, which depends on the deformation of the pore space and the degree of saturation.     

A phase field model in electrowetting and related phenomena

The term electrowetting is commonly used for some techniques to change the shape and wetting behaviour of liquid droplets by the application of electric fields and charges. We developand analyze a model for electrowetting that combines the Navier-Stokes system for fluid flow, a phase-field model of Cahn-Hilliard type for the movement of the interface, a charge transport equation, and the potential equation of electrostatics. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

An embedding method for simulation of immobilized enzyme kinetics and transport in sessile hydrogel drops

A newly-developed embedding method for simulating enzyme kinetics and transport occurring within axisymmetric 3D domains is presented. The physical problem is pertinent to gel-pad microarrays for assessment of enzymatic activity. An enzyme is immobilized uniformly within a hydrogel which is spotted onto a solid surface in the form of a sessile drop, taking on a spherical cap shape. An aqueous solution containing substrate flows slowly past the porous drop. The substrate diffuses into the drop and is converted to product with the help of the enzyme. The product accumulates in and diffuses out of the drop and is taken away by the flow. Spatiotemporal distribution of the product, monitored via fluorescence, can be used to quantify the enzyme kinetics. This process is described by a system of nonlinear reaction-diffusion partial differential equations, modeling the diffusive transport and enzymatic reaction. The computational domain contains both the hydrogel drop and the bulk fluid phases. The embedding method is a computational technique that enables the use of finite differences on a regular Cartesian grid for simulation of multiphase problems with complex interfaces/boundaries. It uses a volume-fraction-based approach, similar to the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method, to implement the boundary conditions that must be applied at the interface between the phases. The main advantage of the embedding method is its simplicity, which results in code generation that can be highly optimized. In the present work, we apply the embedding method to the aforementioned two-phase reaction-diffusion problem and validate the results by comparing to a number of exact solutions available in simpler geometries and to results obtained using a finite-volume method on an unstructured body-fitted mesh. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A bidimensional phase-field model with convection for change phase of an alloy

The article analyzes a two-dimensional phase-field model for a non-stationary process of solidification of a binary alloy with thermal properties. The model allows the occurrence of fluid flow in non-solid regions, which are a priori unknown, and is thus associated to a free boundary value problem for a highly non-linear system of partial differential equations. These equations are the phase-field equation, the heat equation, the concentration equation and a modified Navier-Stokes equations obtained by the addition of a penalization term of Carman-Kozeny type which accounts for the mushy effects. A proof of existence of weak solutions for such system is given. The problem is firstly approximated and a sequence of approximate solutions is obtained by Leray-Schauder fixed point theorem. A solution is then found by using compactness argument.     

Phase-field modeling of the effect of interfacial energy on pyrolytic carbon morphology in chemical vapor deposition

A conserved phase-field model is proposed to investigate the effect of interfacial energy on the morphological evolution of the pyrolytic carbon deposit in chemical vapor deposition. The equilibrium geometry of carbon deposit islands is analytically predicted, of which the contact angle was controlled through the boundary conditions of the phase-field parameter at the substrate surface according to the Young-Laplace equation. Simulations of deposit growth are carried out for single and multi island nucleation. It is clarified that the island morphology depends on the magnitude of the interface energy. It is also observed that high interface energy results in large island size fluctuation. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Temperature effects in thin droplets

Thin droplets spreading on a solid substrate are investigated, with a special focus on temperature effects. The aim is to manipulate the fingering instability which may occur in the spreading in a spin coating process. The analysis bases on lubrication approximation, valid for flat thin droplets, which usually is the case. The dynamic of the wetting is implemented by using a generalized law of Tanner, coupling the contact angle (CA) of the droplet at the (apparent) contact line (CL) with its speed. A one-way coupling is used to investigate, whether viscous heating has to be taken into account. It can be derived that its role is negligible in the spreading process of a thin droplet, even for a relatively large viscous influence (large capillary number). Analyzing the results of a linear stability analysis of the fingering instability and taking Marangoni-stresses (MS) into account reveals, that the instability may be suppressed by cooling the ambient gas or heating the substrate during the spreading. Unfortunately an comparison with experiments for spreading droplets in a heated gas shows deviations for larger spreading radii. The influence of temperature on density is investigated and on the way a criteria, from which it may be obtained whether a simple Boussinesq-approximation (BA) is appropriate or not. (© 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A Product Formula Approach to a Nonhomogeneous Boundary Optimal Control Problem Governed by Nonlinear Phase-field Transition System

In this paper we prove the convergence of an iterative scheme of fractional steps type for a non-homogeneous Cauchy-Neumann boundary optimal control problem governed by non-linear phase-field system, when the boundary control is dependent both on time and spatial variables. Moreover, necessary optimality conditions are established for the approximating process. The advantage of such approach leads to a numerical algorithm in order to approximate the original optimal control problem.     

Anisotropy of wetting and spreading

We give a survey of articles in which the anisotropy of the processes of wetting and spreading has been studied as manifested in a change in the contact angle as a function of a chosen direction within the confines of a single facet in passage from one facet of a crystal to another and also in a deviation from the axisymmetric shape of a drop lying or spreading over a planar surface of a solid body.Translated fromMatematicheskie Metody i Fiziko-Mekhanicheskie Polya, Issue 31, 1990, pp. 8–16.     

A Posteriori Error Analysis of a Fully-Mixed Finite Element Method for a Two-Dimensional Fluid-Solid Interaction Problem

In this paper we develop an a posteriori error analysis of a fully-mixed finite element method for a fluid-solid interaction problem in 2D. The media are governed by the elastodynamic and acoustic equations in time-harmonic regime, respectively, the transmission conditions are given by the equilibrium of forces and the equality of the corresponding normal displacements, and the fluid is supposed to occupy an annular region surrounding the solid, so that a Robin boundary condition imitating the behavior of the Sommerfeld condition is imposed on its exterior boundary. Dual-mixed approaches are applied in both domains, and the governing equations are employed to eliminate the displacement u of the solid and the pressure $p$ of the fluid. In addition, since both transmission conditions become essential, they are enforced weakly by means of two suitable Lagrange multipliers. The unknowns of the solid and the fluid are then approximated by a conforming Galerkin scheme defined in terms of PEERS elements in the solid, Raviart-Thomas of lowest order in the fluid, and continuous piecewise linear functions on the boundary. As the main contribution of this work, we derive a reliable and efficient residual-based a posteriori error estimator for the aforedescribed coupled problem. Some numerical results confirming the properties of the estimator are also reported.     

Numerical simulation for natural convection of micropolar fluids flow along slender hollow circular cylinder with wall conduction effect

This paper presents a numerical analysis of the flow and heat transfer characteristics of natural convection in a micropolar fluid flowing along a vertical slender hollow circular cylinder with conduction effects. The nonlinear formulation governing equations and their associated boundary conditions are first cast into dimensionless forms by a local non-similar transformation. The resulting equations are then solved using the cubic spline collocation method and the finite difference scheme. This study investigates the effects of the conjugate heat transfer parameter, the micropolar parameter, and the Prandtl number on the flow and the thermal fields. The conjugate heat transfer parameter reduces the solid–liquid interfacial temperature, the skin friction factor and the local heat transfer rate. The effect of wall conduction on the local heat transfer rate, interfacial temperature and skin friction factor is found to be more pronounced in a system with a greater Prandtl number. Moreover, the current results are comparing with Newtonian fluid to obtain the important results of the heat transfer and flow characteristics on micropolar fluids. It shows that an increase in the interfacial temperature, a reduction in the skin friction factor, and a reduction in the local heat transfer rate are identified in the current micropolar fluid case.     

A multiphase single relaxation time lattice Boltzmann model for heterogeneous porous media

The lattice Boltzmann (LB) method has been shown to be a highly efficient numerical method for solving fluid flow in confined domains such as pipes, irregularly shaped channels or porous media. Traditionally the LB method has been applied to flow in void regions (pores) and no flow in solid regions. However, in a number of scenarios, this may not suffice. That is partial flow may occur in semi-porous regions. Recently gray-scale LB methods have been applied to model single phase flow in such semi-porous materials. Voxels are no longer completely void or completely solid but somewhere in between. We extend the single relaxation time LB method to model multiphase, immiscible flow (e.g., gas and liquid or water and oil) in a semi-porous medium. We compare the solution to test cases and find good agreement of the model as compared to analytical solutions. We then apply the model to real porous media and recover both capillary and viscous flow regimes. However, some deficiencies in the single relaxation time LB method applied to multiphase flow are uncovered and we describe methods to overcome these limitations.     

On numerical schemes for phase-field models for electrowetting with electrolyte solutions

We present an energy-stable, decoupled discrete scheme for a recent model (see [1]) supposed to describe electrokinetic phenomena in two-phase flow with general mass densities. This model couples momentum and Cahn–Hilliard type phase-field equations with Nernst–Planck equations for ion density evolution and an elliptic transmission problem for the electrostatic potential. The transport velocities in our scheme are based on the old velocity field updated via a discrete time integration of the force densities. This allows to split the equations into three blocks which can be treated sequentially: The phase-field equation, the equations for ion transport and electrostatic potential, and the Navier–Stokes type equations. By establishing a discrete counterpart of the continuous energy estimate, we are able to prove the stability of the scheme. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

GLOBAL SOLUTIONS TO THE NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS FOR COMPRESSIBLE HEAT-CONDUCTING FLOW WITH SYMMETRY AND FREE BOUNDARY

ABSTRACT

Global solutions of the multidimensional Navier-Stokes equations for compressible heat-conducting flow are constructed, with spherically symmetric initial data of large oscillation between a static solid core and a free boundary connected to a surrounding vacuum state. The free boundary connects the compressible heat-conducting fluids to the vacuum state with free normal stress and zero normal heat flux. The fluids are initially assumed to fill with a finite volume and zero density at the free boundary, and with bounded positive density and temperature between the solid core and the initial position of the free boundary. One of the main features of this problem is the singularity of solutions near the free boundary. Our approach is to combine an effective difference scheme to construct approximate solutions with the energy methods and the pointwise estimate techniques to deal with the singularity of solutions near the free boundary and to obtain the bounded estimates of the solutions and the free boundary as time evolves. The convergence of the difference scheme is established. It is also proved that no vacuum develops between the solid core and the free boundary, and the free boundary expands with finite speed.