Non-Ideal and Multi-Phase Flows

For studying problems in diverse fields such as marine hydrodynamics, combustion, weather science, as well as countless biological and industrial processes, computational methods capable of handling multiple phases and evolving interfaces are essential. The lattice-Boltzmann method is used as a framework for the development of broadly applicable multiphase methods that directly resolve the thermodynamics of the interface, in contrast to well known interface tracking methods such as volume of fluid (VOF).

By discarding the ideal-gas assumption of many computational fluid dynamics methods and incorporating more complex, non-ideal thermodynamics, multiple phases and their interfaces arise naturally from the prescribed thermodynamic conditions. This additional physical consistency offers benefits for modeling flows with dramatically varying thermodynamic regimes, such as those found inside internal combustion and rocket engines, or flows where the nature of the interface itself may be of interest, such as in problems of bubble nucleation or cavitation.

These methods are now well-established for the simulation of isothermal, low-speed flows with two phases and have been successfully used to investigate the behavior of bouncing droplets.

A major focus of the group is expanding these methods to incorporate the more diverse physics of multispecies, thermal, and compressible flows in order to fully realize their potential.