Curvature estimation from a volume of fluid indicator function for the simulation of surface tension and wetting with a free surface lattice Boltzmann method

Abstract

The free surface lattice Boltzmann method (FSLBM) is a combination of the hydrodynamic lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) with a volume of fluid (VOF) interface apturing technique for the simulation of incompressible free surface flows. Capillary effects are modeled by extracting the curvature of the interface from the VOF indicator function and imposing a pressure jump at the free boundary. However, obtaining accurate curvature estimates from a VOF description can introduce significant errors. This article reports numerical results for three different surface tension models in standard test cases, and compares the according errors in the velocity field (spurious currents). Furthermore, the FSLBM is shown to be suited to simulate wetting effects at solid boundaries. To this end, a new method is developed to represent wetting boundary conditions in a least squares curvature econstruction technique. The main limitations of the current FSLBM are analyzed and are found to be caused by its simplified advection scheme. Possible improvements are suggested.

References in corpus (1)

• Free Surface Lattice Boltzmann with Enhanced Bubble Model

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Analytic Solution to the Piecewise Linear Interface Construction Problem and its Application in Curvature Calculation for Volume-of-Fluid Simulation Codes
• Direct simulation of liquid-gas-solid flow with a free surface lattice Boltzmann method
• Analysis and comparison of boundary condition variants in the free-surface lattice Boltzmann method
• Comparison of refilling schemes in the free-surface lattice Boltzmann method
• Comparison of free-surface and conservative Allen-Cahn phase-field lattice Boltzmann method