Talk held on Direct Numerical Simulation of Multiphase Flow at SBASSE

Monday, January 6, 2020

The Department of Electrical Engineering at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering (SBASSE) held a talk on 'New Advances in Direct Numerical Simulation of Multiphase Flow' on January 3, 2020. Dr. Amir Riaz Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park presented the talk.

Multi-phase flow of immiscible fluids impacts climate and society. It occurs over a wide range of physical phenomenon in both natural processes as well as industrial applications ranging from biological and microscopic scales to planetary and astrophysical scales. Modeling and prediction of multi-phase flow focus on the analysis of fluid-fluid, solid-fluid and gas-liquid interactions involving thermophysical phase transitions at critical points across phase boundaries.

The fundamental challenge in the simulation of multi-phase flow relates to the modeling and implementation of singular fields associated with physical discontinuities at phase boundaries that are coupled with the flow and undergo complex topological evolution over time.

This talk was focused on the description of novel methodologies developed in our lab that advance the state-of-the-art in the areas of interface advection and the regularisation of interface singularities. Implicit level sets are used on uniform adaptive grids together with high accuracy projection of interfacial fields onto finite sized regularisation zones surrounding the interface. These developments make it possible for us to carry out high fidelity, robust and massively parallel direct numerical simulations of multiscale phenomenon ranging from nucleate boiling in low gravity, entrainment of bubbles in turbulent boundary layers and evaporative cooling in micro-channel jet streams.