ECCOMAS 2024

An Enriched Finite Element (E-FEM)/ Conservative Level-Set Approach for Analysis of Microfluidic Two-Phase Flows

  • Shamekhi, Alireza (UPC)
  • Hashemi, Mohammad Reza (CIMNE)
  • Ryzhakov, Pavel (UPC)
  • Codina, Ramon (UPC)

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Enriched Finite Element method (E-FEM) has proven to be a powerful tool for the simulation of two-phase (gas-liquid) flows in microfluidic applications [1]. One of the particularly important features is the ability of the method to accurately represent sharp discontinuity at the gas-liquid interface already on coarse meshes. Consequently, the approach does not require an artificial "spreading-out" of surface tension over a layer of finite thickness. As a remedy to the known mass conservation issues associated with the classical level-set method, in the present work, we equip the proposed E-FEM with the conservative level-set approach for gas-liquid interface tracking. Following the ideas of Olsson et al. [2, 3], instead of a smooth distance function, a heavyside-like function is introduced to the convection equation, which is solved to track the interface evolution. After each convection step, this function is "rectified" by solving a pseudo-convection-diffusion-reaction equation, ensuring that the interface is well-preserved. The latter equation is solved using a shock-capturing FEM scheme within a limited band around the interface until it approaches a pseudo-steady-state condition. We show that the employment of the E-FEM in conjunction with the conservative level set leads to considerable benefits and allows for avoiding the frequent use of costly distance reinitialization process, which is mandatory when the standard level set is used [4, 5]. We emphasize the importance of the fact that due to modeling the surface tension as a surface force, the computation of the curvature is necessary only in the direct vicinity of the interface, and thus spurious behavior of the normal vector away from the interface reported in literature [6] has no impact on the performance of the method. References [1] Mohammad R. Hashemi, Pavel B. Ryzhakov, and Riccardo Rossi (2020). An enriched finite element/level-set method for simulating two-phase incompressible fluid flows with surface tension. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 370, 113277. [2] Elin Olsson, and Gunilla Kreiss (2005). A conservative level set method for two phase flow. Journal of Computational Physics, 210(1), 225-246. [3] Elin Olsson, Gunilla Kreiss, and Sara Zahedi (2007). A conservative level set method for two phase flow II. Journal of Computational Physics, 225(1), 785-807. [4] Mathias Moog, Rainer Keck, and Aivars Zemitis (2010). Some numerical aspects of the level set method. Mat