14. Two-phase flow

This chapter describes various aspects of the two-phase flow model in ComFLOW.

14.1. General

The following solution modes can be set in the attribute options/@multi_phase:

"@multi_phase"  
"0" incompressible one-phase flow
"1" incompressible/compressible two-phase flow (phase 1 is incompressible, phase 2 is compressible)
"2" incompressible two-phase flow (both phases are incompressible)

When using the two-phase model of ComFLOW, the density is discretized in the cell centers (the locations of the pressures) and an averaging method has to be used to determine the density on the cell faces (the locations of the velocities). The density averaging method can be selected with the attribute numerical/interpolations/@density_averaging. The following methods are available (recommended in bold):

"@density_averaging"  
"weighted" a basic weighted average
"gravity_consistent" a gravity consistent averaging method as described in :cite:`wemmenhove2008numerical`, that accounts for the local fluid distribution
"improved" a gravity consistent averaging method based on an improved reconstruction of the free-surface interface

14.2. Fluid properties

For both phases physical properties can be specified. These settings can be provided in the XML sections physical/liquid_phase and physical/gas_phase. The following phase attributes can be set:

density The density expressed in kg m^-3
viscosity The dynamic viscosity expressed in kg/m.s
gamma The expansion coefficient in the equation of state. For air \(\gamma=1.4\) is frequently used. This attribute is ignored for the liquid phase (phase 1).

Note that for a one-phase simulation the settings in physical/gas_phase/ are ignored.

The atmospheric pressure can be specified with attribute physical/@atmospheric_pressure. A typical value for the atmospheric pressure is 10,000 Pa.

14.3. Surface tension

The surface tension model of ComFLOW is currently undergoing significant changes, more information will follow.