Two-phase numerical coupling

- part of the Ph.D. thesis and postdoc under a EPSRC project -

- with J.P. Vila, C. Laurent, F. Charru; P. Valluri, M. Lucquiaud, Sulzer Chem. (M. Wehrli) -

The computational cost required to solve numerically two-phase flows can be extremely high.

To tackle this problem, I developed a low-dimensional film model and then coupled it to Naviers-Stokes equations (to solve the gas phase) via the coupling conditions at the interface. The main feature of this code is the moving mesh which allow us to transfer the displacement of the interface from the liquid to the gas.

This model (called SWANS, i.e. Shallow Water Ale Navier-Stokes) is accurate while very fast.

This video shows the growing of an interfacial gas-liquid wave, which travels upwards (in the video the gravity is pointing right) and then stops producing to the so-called "standing wave".

Publications

G. Lavalle, J.-P. Vila, M. Lucquiaud, P. Valluri, "Ultraefficient reduced model for countercurrent two-layer flows". Physical Review Fluids, Vol. 2, Iss. 1, 2017.

G. Lavalle, J.-P. Vila, G. Blanchard, C. Laurent, F. Charru, ''A numerical reduced model for thin liquid films sheared by a gas flow'', Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 301, 119-140, 2015.

G. Lavalle, ''Integral modeling of liquid films sheared by a gas flow'', Ph.D. thesis, Université de Toulouse - ISAE, December 2014.

G. Lavalle, J. P. Vila, (in preparation).