A penalization method for the simulation of bubbly flows

Antoine Morente (1, 2) , Jérôme Laviéville (1) , Dominique Legendre (2)

1 EDF - EDF
2 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse

This work is devoted to the development of a penalization method for the simulation of bubbly flows. Spherical bubbles are considered as moving penalized obstacles interacting with the fluid and a numerical method for ensuring the shear free condition at the liquid– bubble interface is proposed. Three test-cases (curved channel, inclined channel and 3D translating bubble) are used to validate the accuracy of the discretization ensuring the slip condition at the interface. Numerical simulations of a rising bubble in a quiescent liquid are performed for moderate Reynolds numbers. Considering bubble terminal velocities, initial accelerations and wake decay, the effect of the penalization viscosity used to ensure a uniform velocity in the penalized object is discussed. Finally, simulations of bubble swarms have been carried out in a fully periodic box with a large range of void fractions from 1% to 15%. The statistics provided by the simulations characterizing the bubble-induced agitation are found in remarkable agreement with the experiments.

Mots clés: Bubbly flows; Penalization method; Shear free condition; Bubble induced agitation

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Antoine Morente, Jérôme Laviéville, Dominique Legendre. A penalization method for the simulation of bubbly flows. Journal of Computational Physics, 2018, 374, pp.563-590. ⟨10.1016/j.jcp.2018.07.042⟩. ⟨hal-02077455⟩