High--order discontinuous Galerkin approximation for a three--phase incompressible Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard model

TL;DR

This paper develops a high-order discontinuous Galerkin numerical method for simulating three-phase incompressible flows using a coupled Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard model, demonstrating its effectiveness in complex geometries relevant to industry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel high-order discontinuous Galerkin approach combined with an IMEX scheme for three-phase flow simulation based on a coupled Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard model.

Findings

Accurate simulation of oil transport in complex geometries.

Validation through convergence studies and realistic flow scenarios.

Effective handling of three-phase flow dynamics in industrial applications.

Abstract

In this work we introduce the development of a three--phase incompressible Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard numerical method to simulate three--phase flows, present in many industrial operations. The numerical method is then applied to successfully solve oil transport problems, such as those found in the oil and gas industry. The three--phase model adopted in this work is a Cahn--Hilliard diffuse interface model, which was derived by Boyer and Lapuerta et al. 2006. The Cahn--Hilliard model is coupled to the entropy--stable incompressible Navier--Stokes equations model derived by Manzanero et al. 2019. The spatial discretization uses a high--order discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method which yields highly accurate results in arbitrary geometries, while an implicit--explicit (IMEX) method is adopted as temporal discretization. The developed numerical tool is tested for two and three dimensional problems, including a convergence study, a two--dimensional jet, a three--dimensional annular flow, and realistic geometries like T--shaped pipe intersections.