An explicit scheme for tracking the filling front during polymer mold filling

Abstract Tracking the filling front during polymer mold filling can be achieved by solving the so-called “volume of fluid” (VOF) equation. In this paper, a method that unifies many of the existing VOF-based schemes is introduced. Each variant of this unified method requires, at each time step, the solution of a system of equations which can be nonlinear. The introduction of pseudo compressibility transforms the basic VOF equation into an equation that matches the well-known enthalpy formulation for solid/liquid phase change. This leads to a fully explicit scheme of the governing filling equations that does not require the solution of a system of equations. If the pseudo compressibility is small enough, the explicit solution is close to the solution obtained with a direct solution of the incompressible VOF equation. Further, in some cases, the explicit scheme is computationally efficient in terms of CPU time and accuracy.