Shaoping Quan

Modeling merging and breakup in the moving mesh interface tracking method for multiphase flow simulations

The three-dimensional, moving mesh interface tracking (MMIT) method coupled with local mesh adaptations by Quan and Schmidt [S.P. Quan, D.P. Schmidt, A moving mesh interface tracking method for 3D incompressible two-phase flows, J. Comput. Phys. 221 (2007) 761-780] demonstrated the capability to accurately simulate multiphase flows, to handle large deformation, and also to perform interface pinch-off for some specific cases. However, another challenge, i.e. how to handle interface merging (such as droplet coalescence) has not been addressed. In this paper, we present a mesh combination scheme for interface connection and a more general mesh separation algorithm for interface breakup. These two schemes are based on the conversion of liquid cells in one phase to another fluid by changing the fluid properties of the cells in the combination or separation region. After the conversion, the newly created interface is usually ragged, and a local projection method is employed to smooth the interface. Extra mesh adaptation criteria are introduced to handle colliding interfaces with almost zero curvatures as the distance between the interfaces diminishes. Simulations of droplet pair collisions including both head-on and off-center coalescences show that the mesh adaptations are capable of resolving very small length scales, and the mesh combination and mesh separation schemes can handle the topological transitions in multiphase flows. The potential of our method to perform detailed investigations of droplet coalescence and breakup is also displayed.

Direct Numerical Study of a Liquid Droplet Impulsively Accelerated by Gaseous Flow

A liquid spherical droplet impulsively accelerated by a gaseous flow is simulated in order to investigate the drag force and the deformation. The dynamics of the droplet immersed in a gaseous flow are investigated by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations using a finite volume staggered mesh method coupled with a moving mesh interface tracking scheme. The benefit of the current scheme is that the interface conditions are implemented directly on an explicitly located interface with zero thickness. The droplet shape changes as it is accelerated, and the deformation factor of the droplet is as small as 0.2, so mesh adaptation methods are employed to achieve good mesh quality and to capture the interface curvature. The total drag coefficients are found to be larger than typical steady-state drag coefficients of solid spheres at the same Reynolds numbers. This agrees with the observation of Temkin et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 96, 133 (1980)] that the unsteady drag of decelerating relative flows was alway...

A numerical study of the relaxation and breakup of an elongated drop in a viscous liquid

The relaxation and breakup of an elongated droplet in a viscous and initially quiescent fluid is studied by solving the full Navier-Stokes equations using a three-dimensional finite volume method coupled with a moving mesh interface tracking (MMIT) scheme to locate the interface. The two fluids are assumed incompressible and immiscible. The interface is represented as a surface triangle mesh with zero thickness that moves with the fluid. Therefore, the jump and continuity conditions across the interface are implemented directly, without any smoothing of the fluid properties. Mesh adaptations on a tetrahedral mesh are employed to permit large deformation and to capture the changing curvature. Mesh separation is implemented to allow pinch-off. The detailed investigations of the relaxation and breakup process are presented in a more general flow regime compared to the previous works by Stone & Leal (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 198, 1989, p. 399) and Tong & Wang (Phys. Fluids, vol. 19, 2007, 092101), including the flow field of the both phases. The simulation results reveal that the vortex rings due to the interface motion and the conservation of mass play an important role in the relaxation and pinch-off process. The vortex rings are created and collapsed during the process. The effects of viscosity ratio, density ratio and length ratio on the relaxation and breakup are studied. The simulations indicate that the fluid velocity field and the neck shape are distinctly different for viscosity ratios larger and smaller than O(1), and thus a different end-pinching mechanism is observed for each regime. The length ratio also significantly affects the relaxation process and the velocity distributions, but not the neck shape. The influence of the density ratio on the relaxation and breakup process is minimal. However, the droplet evolution is retarded due to the large density of the suspending flow. The formation of a satellite droplet is observed, and the volume of the satellite droplet depends strongly on the length ratio and the viscosity ratio.

Modeling of internal and near-nozzle flow for a GDI fuel injector

A numerical study of two-phase flow inside the nozzle holes and the issuing spray jets for a multi-hole direct injection gasoline injector has been presented in this work. The injector geometry is representative of the Spray G nozzle, an eight-hole counterbore injector, from the Engine Combustion Network (ECN). Simulations have been carried out for a fixed needle lift. Effects of turbulence, compressibility and non-condensable gases have been considered in this work. Standard k–e turbulence model has been used to model the turbulence. Homogeneous Relaxation Model (HRM) coupled with Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach has been utilized to capture the phase change phenomena inside and outside the injector nozzle. Three different boundary conditions for the outlet domain have been imposed to examine non-flashing and evaporative, non-flashing and non-evaporative and flashing conditions. Noticeable hole-to-hole variations have been observed in terms of mass flow rates for all the holes under all the operating conditions considered in this study. Inside the nozzle holes mild cavitation-like and in the near-nozzle region flash boiling phenomena have been predicted when liquid fuel is subjected to superheated ambiance. Under favorable conditions considerable flashing has been observed in the near-nozzle regions. An enormous volume is occupied by the gasoline vapor, formed by the flash boiling of superheated liquid fuel. Large outlet domain connecting the exits of the holes and the pressure outlet boundary appeared to be necessary leading to substantial computational cost. Volume-averaging instead of mass-averaging is observed to be more effective, especially for finer mesh resolutions.Copyright

Numerical simulation of internal and near-nozzle flow of a gasoline direct injection fuel injector

A numerical study of two-phase flow inside the nozzle holes and the issuing spray jets for a multi-hole direct injection gasoline injector has been presented in this work. The injector geometry is representative of the Spray G nozzle, an eight-hole counterbore injector, from, the Engine Combustion Network (ECN). Simulations have been carried out for the fixed needle lift. Effects of turbulence, compressibility and, non-condensable gases have been considered in this work. Standard k—ɛ turbulence model has been used to model the turbulence. Homogeneous Relaxation Model (HRM) coupled with Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach has been utilized to capture the phase change phenomena inside and outside the injector nozzle. Three different boundary conditions for the outlet domain have been imposed to examine non-flashing and evaporative, non-flashing and non-evaporative, and flashing conditions. Inside the nozzle holes mild cavitation-like and in the near-nozzle region flash boiling phenomena have been predicted in this study when liquid fuel is subjected to superheated ambiance. Noticeable hole to hole variation has been also observed in terms of mass flow rates for all the holes under both flashing and non-flashing conditions.

Development of a Stiffness-Based Chemistry Load Balancing Scheme, and Optimization of I/O and Communication, to Enable Massively Parallel High-Fidelity Internal Combustion Engine Simulations

A closed-cycle gasoline compression ignition engine simulation near top dead center (TDC) was used to profile the performance of a parallel commercial engine computational fluid dynamics code, as it was scaled on up to 4096 cores of an IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. The test case has 9 million cells near TDC, with a fixed mesh size of 0.15 mm, and was run on configurations ranging from 128 to 4096 cores. Profiling was done for a small duration of 0.11 crank angle degrees near TDC during ignition. Optimization of input/output performance resulted in a significant speedup in reading restart files, and in an over 100-times speedup in writing restart files and files for post-processing. Improvements to communication resulted in a 1400-times speedup in the mesh load balancing operation during initialization, on 4096 cores. An improved, “stiffness-based” algorithm for load balancing chemical kinetics calculations was developed, which results in an over 3-times faster run-time near ignition on 4096 cores relative to the original load balancing scheme. With this improvement to load balancing, the code achieves over 78% scaling efficiency on 2048 cores, and over 65% scaling efficiency on 4096 cores, relative to 256 cores.Copyright

Validation of a Three-Dimensional Internal Nozzle Flow Model Including Automatic Mesh Generation and Cavitation Effects

Fuel injectors often experience cavitation due to regions of extremely low pressure. In this work, a cavitation modeling method is implemented in the CONVERGE CFD code to model the flow in fuel injectors. CONVERGE includes a Cartesian mesh based flow solver. In this solver, a Volume Of Fluid (VOF) method is used to simulate the multiphase flow. The cavitation model is based on a flash-boiling method with rapid heat transfer between the liquid and vapor phases. In this method, a homogeneous relaxation model is used to describe the rate at which the instantaneous quality, the mass fraction of vapor in a two-phase mixture, will tend towards its equilibrium value. The model is first validated with the nozzle flow case of Winklhofer by comparing the mass flow rate with experimentally measured values at different outlet pressures. The cavitation contour shape is also compared with the experimental observations. Flow in the Engine Combustion Network Spray-A nozzle configuration is simulated. The mesh dependency is also studied in this work followed by validation against discharge coefficient data. Finally, calculations of a five-hole injector, including moving needle effects, are compared to experimental measurements.Copyright