Preconditioned Krylov subspace methods used in solving two‐dimensional transient two‐phase flows

This paper investigates the performance of preconditioned Krylov subspace methods used in a previously presented two‐fluid model developed for the simulation of separated and intermittent gas–liquid flows. The two‐fluid model has momentum and mass balances for each phase. The equations comprising this model are solved numerically by applying a two‐step semi‐implicit time integration procedure. A finite difference numerical scheme with a staggered mesh is used. Previously, the resulting linear algebraic equations were solved by a Gaussian band solver. In this study, these algebraic equations are also solved using the generalized minimum residual (GMRES) and the biconjugate gradient stabilized (Bi‐CGSTAB) Krylov subspace iterative methods preconditioned with incomplete LU factorization using the ILUT(p, τ) algorithm. The decrease in the computational time using the iterative solvers instead of the Gaussian band solver is shown to be considerable. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A further work on multi‐phase two‐fluid approach for compressible multi‐phase flows

This paper is to continue our previous work Niu (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2001; 36 :351–371) on solving a two‐fluid model for compressible liquid–gas flows using the AUSMDV scheme. We first propose a pressure–velocity‐based diffusion term originally derived from AUSMDV scheme Wada and Liou (SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 1997; 18 (3):633—657) to enhance its robustness. The scheme can be applied to gas and liquid fluids universally. We then employ the stratified flow model Chang and Liou (J. Comput. Physics 2007; 225 :240–873) for spatial discretization. By defining the fluids in different regions and introducing inter‐phasic force on cell boundary, the stratified flow model allows the conservation laws to be applied on each phase, and therefore, it is able to capture fluid discontinuities, such as the fluid interfaces and shock waves, accurately. Several benchmark tests are studied, including the Ransom's Faucet problem, 1D air–water shock tube problems, 2D shock‐water column and 2D shock‐bubble interaction problems. The results indicate that the incorporation of the new dissipation into AUSM⁺‐up scheme and the stratified flow model is simple, accurate and robust enough for the compressible multi‐phase flows. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unsteady single‐phase level set method for viscous free surface flows

The single‐phase level set method for unsteady viscous free surface flows is presented. In contrast to the standard level set method for incompressible flows, the single‐phase level set method is concerned with the solution of the flow field in the water (or the denser) phase only. Some of the advantages of such an approach are that the interface remains sharp, the computation is performed within a fluid with uniform properties and that only minor computations are needed in the air. The location of the interface is determined using a signed distance function, and appropriate interpolations at the fluid/fluid interface are used to enforce the jump conditions. A reinitialization procedure has been developed for non‐orthogonal grids with large aspect ratios. A convective extension is used to obtain the velocities at previous time steps for the grid points in air, which allows a good estimation of the total derivatives. The method was applied to three unsteady tests: a plane progressive wave, sloshing in a two‐dimensional tank, and the wave diffraction problem for a surface ship, and the results compared against analytical solutions or experimental data. The method can in principle be applied to any problem in which the standard level set method works, as long as the stress on the second phase can be specified (or neglected) and no bubbles appear in the flow during the computation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of temporal and spatial high‐order schemes for two‐fluid seven‐equation two‐pressure model and its applications in two‐phase flow benchmark problems

Current existing main nuclear thermal‐hydraulics (T‐H) system analysis codes, such as RALAP5, TRACE, and CATHARE, play a crucial role in the nuclear engineering field for the design and safety analysis of nuclear reactor systems. However, two‐fluid model used in these T‐H system analysis codes is ill posed, easily leading to numerical oscillations, and the classical first‐order methods for temporal and special discretization are widely employed for numerical simulations, yielding excessive numerical diffusion. Two‐fluid seven‐equation two‐pressure model is of particular interest due to the inherent well‐posed advantage. Moreover, high‐order accuracy schemes have also attracted great attention to overcome the challenge of serious numerical diffusion induced by low‐order time and space schemes for accurately simulating nuclear T‐H problems. In this paper, the semi‐implicit solution algorithm with high‐order accuracy in space and time is developed for this well‐posed two‐fluid model and the robustness and accuracy are verified and assessed against several important two‐phase flow benchmark tests in the nuclear engineering T‐H field, which include two linear advection problems, the oscillation problem of the liquid column, the Ransom water faucet problem, the reversed water faucet problem, and the two‐phase shock tube problem. The following conclusions are achieved. (1) The proposed semi‐implicit solution algorithm is robust in solving two‐phase flows, even for fast transients and discontinuous solutions. (2) High‐order schemes in both time and space could prevent excessive numerical diffusion effectively and the numerical simulation results are more accurate than those of first‐order time and space schemes, which demonstrates the advantage of using high‐order schemes.     

A high‐precision unstructured adaptive mesh technique for gas–liquid two‐phase flows

Adaptive mesh techniques are used widely in the numerical simulations of fluid flows, and the simulation results with high accuracies are obtained by appropriate mesh adaptations. However, gas–liquid two‐phase flows are still difficult to be simulated on adaptive meshes, especially on unstructured adaptive meshes, because the physical phenomena near gas–liquid interfaces are highly complicated and in general, not modeled appropriately on adaptive meshes. In this paper, a high‐precision unstructured adaptive mesh technique for gas–liquid two‐phase flows is developed and verified/validated. In the unstructured adaptive mesh technique, the PLIC algorithm is employed to simulate interfacial dynamic behaviors and, therefore, the reconstruction method for the interfaces in refined cells is developed, which satisfies the gas and liquid volume conservations and geometrical conservations of interfaces. In addition, the physics‐based consideration is performed on the momentum calculations near interfaces, and the calculation method with gas and liquid momentum conservations is developed. For verification, the slotted‐disk revolution problem is solved. As a result, the unstructured adaptive mesh technique succeeds in reproducing the slotted‐disk shape accurately and well maintaining the shape after one full‐revolution. The dam‐break problem is also simulated and the momentum conservative calculation method succeeds in providing physically appropriate results, which show good agreements with experimental data. Therefore, it is confirmed that the developed unstructured adaptive mesh technique is very efficient to simulate gas–liquid two‐phase flows accurately. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Volume preserving immersed boundary methods for two‐phase fluid flows

In this article, we propose a simple area‐preserving correction scheme for two‐phase immiscible incompressible flows with an immersed boundary method (IBM). The IBM was originally developed to model blood flow in the heart and has been widely applied to biofluid dynamics problems with complex geometries and immersed elastic membranes. The main idea of the IBM is to use a regular Eulerian computational grid for the fluid mechanics along with a Lagrangian representation of the immersed boundary. Using the discrete Dirac delta function and the indicator function, we can include the surface tension force, variable viscosity and mass density, and gravitational force effects. The principal advantage of the IBM for two‐phase fluid flows is its inherent accuracy due in part to its ability to use a large number of interfacial marker points on the interface. However, because the interface between two fluids is moved in a discrete manner, this can result in a lack of volume conservation. The idea of an area preserving correction scheme is to correct the interface location normally to the interface so that the area remains constant. Various numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed conservative IBM for two‐phase fluid flows. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical study of wave propagation in compressible two‐phase flow

We propose a new model and a solution method for two‐phase two‐fluid compressible flows. The model involves six equations obtained from conservation principles applied to a one‐dimensional flow of gas and liquid mixture completed by additional closure governing equations. The model is valid for pure fluids as well as for fluid mixtures. The system of partial differential equations with source terms is hyperbolic and has conservative form. Hyperbolicity is obtained using the principles of extended thermodynamics. Features of the model include the existence of real eigenvalues and a complete set of independent eigenvectors. Its numerical solution poses several difficulties. The model possesses a large number of acoustic and convective waves and it is not easy to upwind all of these accurately and simply. In this paper we use relatively modern shock‐capturing methods of a centred‐type such as the total variation diminishing (TVD) slope limiter centre (SLIC) scheme which solve these problems in a simple way and with good accuracy. Several numerical test problems are displayed in order to highlight the efficiency of the study we propose. The scheme provides reliable results, is able to compute strong shock waves and deals with complex equations of state. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A compressible single‐temperature conservative two‐phase model with phase transitions

A model for multidimensional compressible two‐phase flow with pressure and velocity relaxations based on the theory of thermodynamically compatible system is extended to study liquid–gas flows with cavitation. The model assumes for each phase its own pressure and velocity, while a common temperature is considered. The governing equations form a hyperbolic system in conservative form and are derived through the theory of a thermodynamically compatible system. The phase pressure‐equalizing process and the interfacial friction are taken into account in the balance laws for the volume fractions of one phase and for the relative velocity by adding two relaxation source terms, while the phase transition is introduced into the model considering in the balance equation for the mass of one phase the relaxation of the Gibbs free energies of the two phases. A modification of the central finite‐volume Kurganov–Noelle–Petrova method is adopted in this work to solve the homogeneous hyperbolic part, while the relaxation source terms are treated implicitly. In order to investigate the effect of the mass transfer in the solution, a 1D cavitation tube problem is presented. In addition, two 2D numerical simulations regarding cavitation problem are also studied: a cavitating Richtmyer–Meshkov instability and a laser‐induced cavitation problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pressure‐based unified solver for gas‐liquid two‐phase flows where compressible and incompressible flows coexist

We propose a pressure‐based unified solver for gas‐liquid two‐phase flows where compressible and incompressible flows coexist. Unlike the original thermo–Cubic Interpolated Propagation Combined Unified Procedure (CIP‐CUP) method proposed by Himeno et al (Transactions of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Series B, 2003), we split the advection term of the governing equations into a conservation part and into the rest. The splitting of advection term has two advantages. One is the high degree of freedom in choosing discretization schemes such as central‐difference schemes, upwind schemes, and Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) schemes. The other is the ease of implementation on unstructured grids. The advantages enable the analyses of various flows such as turbulent and supersonic ones in actual complicated boundaries. Therefore, the solver is useful for practical analyses. The solver was validated on the following test cases: subsonic single‐phase flows, incompressible single‐phase turbulent flows, and incompressible gas‐liquid two‐phase flows. With unstructured grids, we obtained the equivalent results as the ones with structured grids. After the validations, subsonic jet impinging on a water pool was calculated and compared with experimental results. It was confirmed that the calculated results were consistent with the experimental ones.     

Cahn–Hilliard modeling of particles suspended in two‐phase flows

In this paper, we present a model for the dynamics of particles suspended in two‐phase flows by coupling the Cahn–Hilliard theory with the extended finite element method (XFEM). In the Cahn–Hilliard model the interface is considered to have a small but finite thickness, which circumvents explicit tracking of the interface. For the direct numerical simulation of particle‐suspended flows, we incorporate an XFEM, in which the particle domain is decoupled from the fluid domain. To cope with the movement of the particles, a temporary ALE scheme is used for the mapping of field variables at the previous time levels onto the computational mesh at the current time level. By combining the Cahn–Hilliard model with the XFEM, the particle motion at an interface can be simulated on a fixed Eulerian mesh without any need of re‐meshing. The model is general, but to demonstrate and validate the technique, here the dynamics of a single particle at a fluid–fluid interface is studied. First, we apply a small disturbance on a particle resting at an interface between two fluids, and investigate the particle movement towards its equilibrium position. In particular, we are interested in the effect of interfacial thickness, surface tension, particle size and viscosity ratio of two fluids on the particle movement towards its equilibrium position. Finally, we show the movement of a particle passing through multiple layers of fluids. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of a thermodynamically compatible two‐phase flow model to the high‐resolution simulations of compressible gas–magma flow

This paper reports on the application and development of a fully hyperbolic and fully conservative two‐phase flow model for the simulation of gas and magma flow within volcanic processes. The model solves a set of mixture conservation equations for the gas and magma two‐phase flow with velocity non‐equilibrium. In this model, the effect of the relative velocity is introduced by a kinetic constitutive equation with other equations for volume and mass fractions of the gas phase. The model is examined numerically by the widely used finite volume Godunov methods of centered‐type. Using the Riemann problem, we numerically simulate wave propagation and the development of shocks and rarefactions in volcanic eruptions. These simulations are of magma fragmentation type where the relative velocity continues to dominate. A series of test cases whose solution contains features relevant to gas–magma mixtures are conducted. In particular, numerical results indicate that the model implementation predicts key features of the relative velocity within volcanic processes without any mathematical or physical simplifications. Simulation results are sharply and accurately provided without any spurious oscillations in all of the flow variables. The numerical methods and results are also compared with other numerical methods available in the literature. It is found that the provided resolutions are more accurate for the considered test cases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A pressure correction‐volume of fluid method for simulation of two‐phase flows

A pressure correction method coupled with the volume of fluid (VOF) method is developed to simulate two‐phase flows. A volume fraction function is introduced in the VOF method and is governed by an advection equation. A modified monotone upwind scheme for a conservation law (modified MUSCL) is used to solve the solution of the advection equation. To keep the initial sharpness of an interface, a slope modification scheme is introduced. The continuum surface tension (CST) model is used to calculate the surface tension force. Three schemes, central‐upwind, Parker–Youngs, and mixed schemes, are introduced to compute the interface normal vector and the gradient of the volume fraction function. Moreover, a height function technique is applied to compute the local curvature of the interface. Several basic test problems are performed to check the order of accuracy of the present numerical schemes for computing the interface normal vector and the gradient of the volume fraction function. Three physical problems, two‐dimensional broken dam problem, static drop, and spurious currents, and three‐dimensional rising bubble, are performed to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the pressure correction method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discretizing two‐dimensional complex fractured fields for incompressible two‐phase flow

A method is introduced to discretize irregular and complex two‐dimensional fractured media. The geometry of the fractured media is first analysed by searching and treating the complex configurations. Based on that, the method generated a good mesh quality and allows for including finer grids. An incompressible two‐phase flow problem is solved to compare the developed method and a public method based on the approximation of a 1D fracture by the edges of a 2D finite element grid of the porous media. The comparison showed that the developed method (i) represents better the fractured domain by maintaining the geometric integrity of input surfaces and geologic data, (ii) provides, for sample and complex fractured domains, excellent and more accurate results, and (iii) is much less sensitive to the grid sizes. Furthermore, the method has to be more efficient than the other methods for transport problems and has to provide better predictable results; this is mainly based on point (ii) and because the method produces optimal triangular grids. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interface‐fitted moving mesh method for axisymmetric two‐phase flow in microchannels

A boundary‐fitted moving mesh scheme is presented for the simulation of two‐phase flow in two‐dimensional and axisymmetric geometries. The incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations are solved using the finite element method, and the mini element is used to satisfy the inf‐sup condition. The interface between the phases is represented explicitly by an interface adapted mesh, thus allowing a sharp transition of the fluid properties. Surface tension is modelled as a volume force and is discretized in a consistent manner, thus allowing to obtain exact equilibrium (up to rounding errors) with the pressure gradient. This is demonstrated for a spherical droplet moving in a constant flow field. The curvature of the interface, required for the surface tension term, is efficiently computed with simple but very accurate geometric formulas. An adaptive moving mesh technique, where smoothing mesh velocities and remeshing are used to preserve the mesh quality, is developed and presented. Mesh refinement strategies, allowing tailoring of the refinement of the computational mesh, are also discussed. Accuracy and robustness of the present method are demonstrated on several validation test cases. The method is developed with the prospect of being applied to microfluidic flows and the simulation of microchannel evaporators used for electronics cooling. Therefore, the simulation results for the flow of a bubble in a microchannel are presented and compared to experimental data.     

A SOLVER USING NEWTON‘S METHOD FOR UNSTEADY VISCOUS FLOWS

A solver is developed for time-accurate computations of viscous flows based on the conception of Newton‘s method. A set of pseudo-time derivatives are added into governing equations and the discretized system is solved using GMRES algorithm. Due to some special properties of GMRES algorithm, the solution procedure for unsteady flows could be regarded as a kind of Newton iteration. The physical-time derivatives of governing equations are discretized using two different approaches, I.e., 3-point Euler backward, and Crank-Nicolson formulas, both with 2nd-order accuracy in time but with different truncation errors. The turbulent eddy viscosity is calculated by using a version of Spalart~Allmaras one-equation model modified by authors for turbulent flows. Two cases of unsteady viscous flow are investigated to validate and assess the solver, I.e., low Reynolds number flow around a row of cylinders and transonic bi-circular-arc airfoil flow featuring the vortex shedding and shock buffeting problems, respectively. Meanwhile, comparisons between the two schemes of timederivative discretizations are carefully made. It is illustrated that the developed unsteady flow solver shows a considerable efficiency and the Crank-Nicolson scheme gives better results compared with Euler method.     

Advection upwinding splitting method to solve a compressible two‐fluid model

In this study, the advection upwinding splitting method (AUSM) is modified for the resolution of two‐phase mixtures with interfaces. The compressible two‐fluid model proposed by Saurel and Abgrall is chosen as the model equations. Dense and dilute phases are described in terms of the volume fraction and equations of state to represent multi‐phase mixtures. Test cases involving an air–water shock tube, water faucet, and dilute particulate turbulent flows through a 90° bend are used to verify the current work. It is shown that the AUSM based on flux differences (AUSMD) contains the mechanism to correctly capture the contact discontinuity and interfaces between phases. In addition, a successful application to dilute particulate turbulence flows by the AUSMD is demonstrated. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The intrinsic XFEM for two‐fluid flows

In two‐fluid flows, jumps and/or kinks along the interfaces are present in the resulting velocity and pressure fields. Standard methods require mesh manipulations with the aim that either element edges align with the interfaces or that the mesh is sufficiently refined near the interfaces. In contrast, enriched methods, such as the extended finite element method (XFEM), enable the representation of arbitrary jumps and kinks inside elements. Thereby, optimal convergence can be achieved for two‐fluid flows with meshes that remain fixed throughout the simulation. In the intrinsic XFEM, in contrast to other enriched methods, no more unknowns are present in the approximation than in a standard finite element approximation. In this work, the intrinsic XFEM is employed for the simulation of incompressible two‐fluid flows. Numerical results are shown for a number of test cases and prove the success of the method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical simulation of the unsteady behaviour of cavitating flows

A 2D numerical model is proposed to simulate unsteady cavitating flows. The Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations are solved for the mixture of liquid and vapour, which is considered as a single fluid with variable density. The vapourization and condensation processes are controlled by a barotropic state law that relates the fluid density to the pressure variations. The numerical resolution is a pressure‐correction method derived from the SIMPLE algorithm, with a finite volume discretization. The standard scheme is slightly modified to take into account the cavitation phenomenon. That numerical model is used to calculate unsteady cavitating flows in two Venturi type sections. The choice of the turbulence model is discussed, and the standard RNG k–εmodel is found to lead to non‐physical stable cavities. A modified k–εmodel is proposed to improve the simulation. The influence of numerical and physical parameters is presented, and the numerical results are compared to previous experimental observations and measurements. The proposed model seems to describe the unsteady cavitation behaviour in 2D geometries well. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A gas‐kinetic scheme for the modified Baer–Nunziato model of compressible two‐phase flow

Numerical methods for the Baer–Nunziato model of compressible two‐phase flow have attracted much attention in recent years. In this paper, a two‐phase Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (BGK) model is constructed in which the non‐conservative terms in the Baer–Nunziato model are considered as the external forces and the collisions both with particles of their phases and other phases are taken into consideration. On the basis of this BGK model, the so‐called modified Baer–Nunziato model is derived and a gas‐kinetic scheme for this modified model is presented. The distribution functions are constructed at the cell interface based on the integral solutions of the BGK equations for both phases. Then, numerical fluxes can be obtained by taking moments of the distribution functions, and non‐conservative terms are explicitly introduced into the construction of numerical fluxes. In this method, not only the iterative processes in the exact Riemann solvers are eliminated but also the collisions with the particles of other phases are taken into account. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.