Numerical Methods for Compressible Multi-phase flows with Surface Tension

In this thesis we present a new and accurate series of computation methods for compressible multi-phase flows with capillary effects based upon the full seven-equation Baer-Nunziato model. For that reason, there are some numerical methods to obtain high accuracy solutions, which will be shown here. First, a high resolution shock capturing Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) finite volume scheme is used on both Cartesian and unstructured triangular grids. Regarding the TVD finite volume scheme on the unstructured grid, time-accurate local time stepping (LTS) is applied to compute the solutions of the governing PDE system, in which the results are also compared with time-accurate global time stepping. Second, we propose a novel high order accurate numerical method for the solution of the seven equation Baer-Nunziato model based on ADER discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element schemes combined with a posteriori subcell finite volume limiting and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). In multi-phase flows, the difficulty is to design accurate numerical methods for resolving the phase interface, as well as the simulation of the phenomena occurring at the interface, such as surface tension effects, heat transfer and friction. This is because of the interactions of the fluids at the phase interface and its complex geometry. So the accurate simulation of compressible multi-phase flows with surface tension effects is currently still one of the most challenging problems in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In this work, we present a novel path-conservative finite volume discretization of the continuum surface force method (CSF) of Brackbill et al. to account for the surface tension effect due to curvature of the phase interface. This is achieved in the context of a diffuse interface approach, based on the seven equation Baer-Nunziato model of compressible multi-phase flows. Such diffuse interface methods for compressible multi-phase flows including capillary effects have first been proposed by Perigaud and Saurel. Regarding the high order accuracy of a diffuse interface approach, the interface is captured and allowed to travel across one single possibly refined cell, and is computed in the context of multi-dimensional high accurate space/time DG schemes with AMR and a posteriori sub-cell stabilization. The surface tension terms of the CSF approach are considered as a part of the non-conservative hyperbolic system. We propose to integrate the CSF source term as a non-conservative product and not simply as a source term, following the ideas on path conservative finite volume schemes put forward by Castro and Parés. For the validation of the current numerical methods, we compare our numerical results with those published previously in the literature.