Comparative study of two lattice Boltzmann multiphase models for simulating wetting phenomena: implementing static contact angles based on the geometric formulation

Wetting phenomena are widespread in nature and industrial applications. In general, systems concerning wetting phenomena are typical multicomponent/multiphase complex fluid systems. Simulating the behavior of such systems is important to both scientific research and practical applications. It is challenging due to the complexity of the phenomena and difficulties in choosing an appropriate numerical method. To provide some detailed guidelines for selecting a suitable multiphase lattice Boltzmann model, two kinds of lattice Boltzmann multiphase models, the modified S-C model and the H-C-Z model, are used in this paper to investigate the static contact angle on solid surfaces with different wettability combined with the geometric formulation (Ding, H. and Spelt, P. D. M. Wetting condition in diffuse interface simulations of contact line motion. Physical Review E, 75(4), 046708 (2007)). The specific characteristics and computational performance of these two lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) multiphase models are analyzed including relationship between surface tension and the control parameters, the achievable range of the static contact angle, the maximum magnitude of the spurious currents (MMSC), and most importantly, the convergence rate of the two models on simulating the static contact angle. The results show that a wide range of static contact angles from wetting to non-wetting can be realized for both models. MMSC mainly depends on the surface tension. With the numerical parameters used in this work, the maximum magnitudes of the spurious currents of the two models are on the same order of magnitude. MMSC of the S-C model is universally larger than that of the H-C-Z model. The convergence rate of the S-C model is much faster than that of the H-C-Z model. The major foci in this work are the frequently-omitted important details in simulating wetting phenomena. Thus, the major findings in this work can provide suggestions for simulating wetting phenomena with LBM multiphase models along with the geometric formulation.