An approximated volume of fluid method with the modified height function method in the simulation of surface tension driven flows

Surface tension in two-phase flow problems plays a dominant role in many micro-flow phenomena and has an important influence on the development of flow instability phenomena that contain free surfaces. In this study, the multi-moment finite volume method is extended for direct numerical simulation of two-phase flow problems. A constraint interpolation profile–CSL (semi-Lagrangian) scheme is used for discretization of the advection part in the momentum equation. A compact volume of fluid method–approximated piecewise linear calculation method without flux limiter is proposed for capturing the moving interface. For modeling the surface tension accurately, the logic in curvature estimation is redesigned based on the height function (HF) method. The isolated volumetric fractions that may reduce accuracy in HF integration are excluded, and the numerical solution shows that the accuracy in the curvature estimation is improved for a coarse mesh. The present method is implemented with a parallel block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (BAMR) strategy; thus, the computational cost can be reduced significantly. Numerical tests show that the present BAMR solver is capable of reproducing the theoretical predictions of capillary wave instability problems with high accuracy. The simulation of droplet collisions further demonstrates the accuracy of the surface tension model. Finally, we extend it to the liquid jet atomization. The wavy disturbance, film breakup, liquid filament pinch-off, and droplet generation are well reproduced. The droplet size distribution satisfies the experimental measurement and theoretical predictions power-law. BAMR shows a huge advantage in computational efficiency than the traditional Cartesian grid. The findings of this study can help for a better understanding of the micro-mechanism of surface tension driven flows.