A low-dissipation convection scheme for the stable discretization of turbulent interfacial flow

Abstract

This paper analyzes a low-dissipation discretization for the resolution of immiscible, incompressible multiphase flow by means of interface-capturing schemes. The discretization is built on a three-dimensional, unstructured finite-volume framework and aims at minimizing the differences in kinetic energy preservation with respect to the continuous governing equations. This property plays a fundamental role in the case of flows presenting significant levels of turbulence. At the same time, the hybrid form of the convective operator proposed in this work incorporates localized low-dispersion characteristics to limit the growth of spurious flow solutions. The low-dissipation discrete framework is presented in detail and, in order to expose the advantages with respect to commonly used methodologies, its conservation properties and accuracy are extensively studied, both theoretically and numerically. Numerical tests are performed by considering a three-dimensional vortex, an exact sinusoidal function, and a spherical drop subjected to surface tension forces in equilibrium and immersed in a swirling velocity field. Finally, the turbulent atomization of a liquid-gas jet is numerically analyzed to further assess the capabilities of the method.