22.10.

2021 16:31 Computational methods for free surface flow - Wikipedia

Computational methods for free surface

flow
In physics, a free surface flow is the surface of a fluid flowing that is subjected to both zero
perpendicular normal stress and parallel shear stress. This can be the boundary between two
homogeneous fluids, like water in an open container and the air in the Earth's atmosphere that
form a boundary at the open face of the container. Computation of free surfaces is complex
because of the continuous change in the location of the boundary layer. Conventional methods of
computation are insufficient for such analysis. Therefore, special methods are developed for the
computation of free surface flows.

Contents
Introduction
Boundary conditions
Kinematic condition
Dynamic condition
Methods of computation
Interface tracking method
Interface capturing method
Marker-and-cell or MAC Scheme
Volume-of-fluid or VOF scheme
Modifications to MAC and VOF scheme
Hybrid methods
References

Introduction
Computation in flows with free and moving boundaries like the open-channel flow is a difficult
task. The position of the boundary is known only at the initial time and its location at later times
can be determined as using various methods like the Interface Tracking Method and the Interface
Capturing Method.

Boundary conditions
Neglecting the phase change at the free surface, the following boundary conditions apply.

Kinematic condition

The free surface should be a sharp boundary separating the two fluids. There should be no flow
through this boundary, i.e.,

or

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where the subscript stands for free surface. This implies that the normal component of the
velocity of the fluid at the surface is equal to the normal component of the velocity of the free
surface.

Dynamic condition

The forces acting on the fluid at free surface should be in equilibrium, i.e. the momentum is
conserved at the free surface. The normal forces on either side of the free surface are equal and
opposite in direction and the forces in tangential direction should be equal in magnitude and
direction.

Here σ is the surface tension, n, t and s are unit vectors in a local orthogonal coordinate system
(n,t,s) at the free surface (n is outward normal to the free surface while the other two lie in the
tangential plane and are mutually orthogonal). The indices 'l' and 'g' denote liquid and gas,
respectively and K is the curvature of the free surface.

with Rt and Rs being radii of curvature along coordinates t and s.

The surface tension σ is force per unit length of a surface element and acts tangential to the free
surface.

For an infinitesimally small surface element dS, the tangential components of the surface tension
forces cancel out when σ = constant, and the normal component can be expressed as a local force
that results in a pressure jump across the surface.

Methods of computation

Interface tracking method

This is a methods which treat the free surface as a sharp interface whose motion is followed. In this
method, boundary-fitted grids are used and advanced each time the free surface is moved.

Interface tracking method is useful in situations like calculation of flow around submerged bodies.
This is done by linearizing about unperturbed free surface, so a height function is introduced for
the free surface elevation relative to its unperturbed state.

This gives the kinematic boundary condition a new form:

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This equation can be integrated and the fluid velocity at free surface can be obtained either by
extrapolation from the interior or by using dynamic boundary condition. For the calculation of
flow, FV method is widely used. The steps for a fully conservative FV method of this type are:

momentum equation is solved to obtain velocity at the current free surface using specified
pressure.
Local mass conservation is enforced in each CV by solving a pressure-correction equation.
Mass is conserved both globally and locally, but velocity-correction is produced at free surface
giving a non-zero mass flux.
Position of free surface is corrected to compensate for the non-zero mass flux with the volume
flux due to the movement of the each free-surface cell face by enforcing the kinematic
boundary conditions.
Iterate until no further correction is needed, satisfying the continuity and momentum equations.
Advance to the next time step.[1]

The main problem with the algorithm in this procedure is that there is only one equation for one
cell but large number of grid nodes moving. To avoid instability and wave reflection, the method is
modified as follows:

From the previous steps, we can calculate the volume of fluid to be flowed in or out of the CV to
have mass conservation. To obtain the coordinates of CV vertices at free surface, we have more
unknowns and less equations due to single volumetric flow rate for each cell.

Hence the CVs are defined by the cell face centers rather than vertices and vertices are obtained by
interpolation. This gives a tridiagonal system for 2D and can be solved using TDMA method. For
3D, the system is block tridiagonal and is best solved by one of the iterative solvers.

Interface capturing method

In computation of two-fluid flows, in some cases the interface might be too complex to track while
keeping the frequency of re-meshing at an acceptable level. Not being able to reduce the frequency
of re-meshing in 3D might introduce overwhelming mesh generation and projection costs, making
the computations with the interface-tracking technique no longer feasible. In such cases, interface-
capturing techniques, which do not normally require costly mesh update steps, could be used with
the understanding that the interface will not be represented as accurately as we would have with
an interface-tracking technique.[2]
Methods which do not define the interface as sharp boundary.
A fixed grid extends beyond the free surface over which the computation is performed. To
determine the shape of the free surface, the fraction of each cell near the interface is computed that
is partially filled.

Marker-and-cell or MAC Scheme

MAC scheme was proposed by Harlow and Welch in 1965. In this method, a massless particle is
introduced at the initial time at the free surface. The motion of this massless particle is followed
with the passage of time.

Benefit: This scheme can treat complex phenomena like wave breaking.

Drawback: In three dimensional flow solving the equations governing fluid flow and also
following the motion of a large number of markers both simultaneously demands high
computational power.
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Volume-of-fluid or VOF scheme

VOF scheme was proposed by Hirt and Nichols in 1981. In this method, fraction of the cell
occupied by the liquid phase can be calculated by solving the transport equation.[3] The transport
equation is:

∂c
∂t
+ div(cv) = 0
where c is the fraction of control volume filled. c=1 for completely filled and c = 0 for completely
empty control volumes.

So in total, for VOF method, one has to solve three forms of equations, conservation equations for
mass, conservation equations for momentum, equation for filled fraction for each control volume.

NOTE: IN INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOWS, ABOVE EQUATION GIVES SAME RESULTS WITH c

AND 1 - c MAKING THE ENFORCEMENT OF MASS CONSERVATION A MUST.

Since the higher order schemes are preferred over lower order schemes to prevent artificial mixing
of the two fluids, it is important to prevent the overshoots and undershoots due to the condition 0
≤ c ≤ 1. For such problems, modifications were made to MAC and VOF schemes.

Modifications to MAC and VOF scheme

Marker and micro-cell method in which local grid refinement is done according to the following
criteria:

only the cells having 0 < c < 1 are refined.

This method is more efficient than MAC scheme because only the cells at the boundary are refined.
But in this method, the free surface profile is not sharply defined.

Hybrid methods

There are some fluid flows which do not come under either of the category, for example, bubbly
flows. For the computation of such two-phase flows which do not come under any of the above
discussed categories, elements are borrowed from both surface-capturing and surface-tracking
methods. Such methods are called hybrid methods. In this method, fluid properties are smeared
over a fixed number of grid points normal to the interface. Now, as in interface capturing method,
both fluids are treated as single fluid with variable properties. Interface is also tracked as in
interface-tracking method to prevent it from smearing by moving the marker particles using the
velocity field generated by the flow solver. marker particles are added and removed to maintain the
accuracy by keeping the approximate spacing between them equal.

References
1. Ferziger, Joel H., and Milovan Perić. Computational methods for fluid dynamics. Vol. 3. Berlin:
Springer, 2002.
2. Tezduyar, T. "Interface-tracking and interface-capturing techniques for computation of moving
boundaries and interfaces." Proceedings of the 6th World Congress on Computational
Mechanics, On-line publication: http://wccm. tuwien. ac. at/, Paper-ID. Vol. 81513. 2002.
3. Hirt, C.W.; Nichols, B.D. (1981), Volume of fluid (VOF) method for the dynamics of free
boundaries, Journal of Computational Physics 39 (1): 201–225,
Bibcode:1981JCoPh..39..201H (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981JCoPh..39..201H/abstr

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act), doi:10.1016/0021-9991(81)90145-5 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2F0021-9991%2881%2990

145-5)

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