Discrete unified gas kinetic scheme for the conservative Allen-Cahn equation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) with second-order accuracy for the conservative Allen-Cahn equation, enhancing interface capturing precision in phase-field simulations.

Contribution

The paper develops a second-order accurate DUGKS with parabolic reconstruction for better interface accuracy in the conservative Allen-Cahn equation.

Findings

Enhanced interface capturing accuracy demonstrated in benchmark tests.

Second-order microflux reconstruction improves solution precision.

Numerical results outperform previous DUGKS methods.

Abstract

In this paper, the discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) with an improved microflux across the cell interface for the conservative Allen-Cahn equation (CACE) is proposed. In the context of DUGKS, the recovered kinetic equation from the flux evaluation with linear reconstruction in the previous DUGKS is analyzed. It is found that the calculated microflux across the cell interface is only the solution to the target kinetic equation with first order accuracy, which can result in an inaccurate CACE since the force term is involved or the first moment of the collision model has no conservation property. To correctly recover the kinetic equation up to the second order accuracy, the value of the distribution function that will propagate along the characteristic line with ending point at the cell interface is appropriated by the parabolic reconstruction instead of the linear reconstruction. To validate the accuracy of the present DUGKS for the CACE, several benchmark problems, including the diagonal translation of a circular interface, the rotation of a Zaleska disk and the deformation of a circular interface, have been simulated. Numerical results show that the present DUGKS scheme is able to capture the interface with improved accuracy when compared with the previous DUGKS.