Efficient simulation of surface tension-dominated flows through enhanced interface geometry interrogation

In this paper, three improvements for modelling surface tension-dominated interfacial flows using interface tracking-based solution algorithms are presented. We have developed an improved approach to curvature estimation for incorporation into modern mesh-based surface tension models such as the Continuum Surface Force (CSF) and Sharp Surface Force (SSF) models. The scheme involves generating samples of curvature estimates from the multitude of height functions that can be generated from VOF representations of interfaces, and applying quality statistics based on interface orientation and smoothness to choose optimal candidates from the samples. In this manner, the orientation-dependence of past schemes for height function-based curvature estimation is ameliorated, the use of compact stencils for efficient computation can be maintained, and robustness is enhanced even in the presence of noticeable subgrid-scale disturbances in the interface representation. For surface tension-dominated flows, the explicit capillary timestep restriction is relaxed through timescale-separated slope limiting that identifies spurious modes in curvature evolution and omits them from contributing to surface force computations, thus promoting efficiency in simulation through the use of less timesteps. Efficiency in flow simulation is further promoted by incorporating awareness of interface location into multigrid preconditioning for Krylov subspace-based solution of elliptic problems. This use of interface-cognizance in solving problems such as the Helmholtz equation and the Poisson equation enables multigrid-like convergence in discontinuous-coefficient elliptic problems without the expense of constructing the Galerkin coarse-grid operator. The key improvements in the surface tension modelling and the numerical linear algebra are also applicable to level-set-based interfacial flow simulation.