A coupled volume-of-fluid and level set (VOSET) method for computing
incompressible two-phase flows
D.L. Sun, W.Q. Tao
*
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy & Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, PR China
article info
Article history:
Received 24 February 2009
Received in revised form 28 August 2009
Accepted 23 September 2009
Available online 10 November 2009
Keywords:
VOF method
LS method
VOSET method
Volume fraction function
Level set function
abstract
A coupled volume-of-fluid and level set (VOSET) method, which combines the advantages and overcomes
the disadvantages of VOF and LS methods, is presented for computing incompressible two-phase flows. In
this method VOF method is used to capture interfaces, which can conserve the mass and overcome the
disadvantage of nonconservation of mass in LS method. An iterative geometric operation proposed by
author is used to calculate the level set function / near interfaces, which can be applied to compute
the accurate curvature
j
and smooth the discontinuous physical quantities near interfaces. By using
the level set function / the disadvantages of VOF method, inaccuracy of curvature and bad smoothness
of discontinuous physical quantities near interfaces, can be overcome. Finally the computing results
made with VOSET method are compared with those made with VOF and LS methods.
Ó 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction
Flows with a spatial variation of fluid properties, such as gas–
liquid interfaces due to density and viscosity differences, can be
found in many natural and industrial processes such as chemical
reactor, power plant, copper refining and internal combustion
engine. The generation of vorticity by the discontinuous fluid prop-
erties produces a complex flow structure, which presents a compu-
tational challenge.
In the past several decades a number of different methods have
been developed to simulate complex two-phase flow problems.
The most important methods include the front tracking method
[1–4], the marker particle method [5,6], the volume of fluid (VOF)
method [7–17] and the level set (LS) method [18–24]. Since the
development of VOF method by Hirt and Nichols [7] in 1981, the
method has become very popular and is widely used in the free-sur-
face modeling. The LS method was developed in 1988 by Osher and
Sethian [18]. It has become popular in many disciplines, such as im-
age processing, computer graphics, computational geometry and
computational physics. Thus, among the four major methods men-
tioned above, the VOF method and LS method are probably the most
widely usedmethods in the literatures. Needless to say, each method
has its own advantages and drawbacks. In the present work based on
a comprehensive analysis to VOF and LS methods, a coupled volume-
of-fluid and level set method (hereafter VOSET), which combines the
advantages and overcomes the disadvantages of VOF and LS
methods, is presented for computing the incompressible two-phase
flows. In the following a brief review on the VOF and LS methods and
their advantages/disadvantages are presented.
In the VOF method, a volume fraction function C, whose value
lies between 0 and 1, is defined to denote whether a space is occu-
pied by the dispersed phase or continuous phase. When the value
of C is unity, the space is occupied by the dispersed phase; when
the value of C is zero, the space is occupied by the continuous
phase; when the value of C is between 0 and 1, the space contains
both the dispersed and continuous phases, where by the definition
a free surface exists.
For a given flow field, the standard advection equation governs
the evolution of C:
@C
@t
þ
~
u
r
C ¼ 0 ð1Þ
If the flow is incompressible, the C advection equation can be recast
in the conservative form:
@C
@t
þ
r
ð
~
uCÞ¼0 ð2Þ
For the C advection equation, the standard finite-difference approx-
imations would lead to a smearing of the C function and the inter-
faces would lose their definition. Therefore, the volume tracking
algorithms are applied to capture the interfaces. Most volume track-
ing algorithms published to date fall into one of these two interface
reconstruction categories: one is the Piecewise Constant Volume
0017-9310/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2009.10.030
* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 29 82669106.
E-mail address: wqtao@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (W.Q. Tao).
International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 53 (2010) 645–655
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt
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