A coupled level set and volume of fluid method for three dimensional unstructured polyhedral meshes for boiling flows

For the numerical modelling of boiling flows with accurate interface dynamics, a new coupled level set and volume of fluid (CLSVOF) method for three-dimensional unstructured polyhedral meshes has been presented in this paper. An unsplit multidirectional method is used for advecting volume fraction. In this method, the cell vertex velocities interpolated from the cell centres are used to create the flux polyhedron. A total variational diminishing (TVD) scheme is used for the advection of level set function. The level set field is geometrically reinitialized after every time step. The present CLSVOF method is tested against several two as well as three-dimensional advection test cases for both structured and unstructured polyhedral meshes to determine its accuracy and performance. In terms of advection test cases, the suggested method shows good agreement with results of previous studies that used interface reconstruction techniques of higher order. The proposed method is then used to simulate two as well as three-dimensional saturated film boiling over a flat planar surface for both unstructured polyhedral and structured meshes. The obtained results are in accordance with the results available in literature. The present CLSVOF method is also demonstrated for saturated film boiling on a horizontal cylinder in both two and three dimensions. In comparison to the earlier numerical studies, the present results are in good accordance with the available semi-empirical correlations.

Automated summary

A new coupled level set and volume of fluid (CLSVOF) method is presented for numerical modelling of boiling flows with accurate interface dynamics, tested against various advection test cases and simulations of saturated film boiling over flat and cylindrical surfaces. The method shows good agreement with previous studies using higher order interface reconstruction techniques.