Numerical simulation of wetting phenomena by a meshfree particle method

TL;DR

This paper presents a meshfree particle method for simulating wetting phenomena using the Navier-Stokes equations, incorporating surface tension and two-phase flow modeling, validated against analytical and test case results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel meshfree particle approach for wetting simulations that effectively models two-phase flow with surface tension effects.

Findings

Good agreement with analytical solutions

Accurate modeling of wetting and sessile drops

Effective use of least-squares for differential operators

Abstract

Simulations of wetting phenomena by a meshfree particle method are presented. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are used to model the two-phase flow. The continuous surface force model is used to incorporate the surface tension force. Chorin's projection method is applied to discretize the Navier-Stokes equations. The different fluid phases are identified by assigning different colors and different material properties (density, viscosity) to the particles that remain unchanged throughout a simulation. Two-phase flow is captured by a one-fluid model via using weighted averages of the density and viscosity in a region around the fluid-fluid interface. The differential operators at each particle are computed from the surrounding cloud of particles with the help of the least-squares method. The numerical results are compared with specific analytical solutions, but also with previously considered test cases involving wetting of a container and sessile drops. A good overall agreement is found.