SURFING · Flow on thin fluid sheets
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-11-01 → 2023-02-28
- EU contribution
- €178,320
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Flow on thin fluid sheets
The general topic of this project is the development of improved mathematical models for thin film flow modelling. The study of such thin fluid layers is an integral part of many flow problems, ranging from gear lubrication and cleaning simulations, through automotive water management and spray coating. While specialized thin film solvers have been developed to model these thin fluid layers, there exists no method to detect their formation, or to couple surface and bulk flow. This project developed a new computational framework to model thin film flow. Unlike existing methods, the proposed method is not just able to model not just the evolution of thin fluid films, but it can also predict the formation and break up of thin fluid sheets. A further advantage of the new framework, referred to as the Discrete Droplet Method (DDM), is that it can predict the evolution of thin fluid films on moving surfaces of any shape. Proof-of-concept applications have shown that this method can significantly benefit rain-on-car applications in the automotive industry to track how rainwater moves over a car, and where it collects. We further developed a model adaptive framework to couple surface and bulk flow. The newly developed DDM for modelling surface flow was coupled with an existing and popular Navier-Stokes solver for bulk fluid flow. Through various examples, we showed that the newly developed model adaptive framework can significantly speed up simulations of coupled bulk surface flow, with one application showing an almost 20x speed-up.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Physical phenomena that combine effects on a surface and that in the bulk occur in many fields, ranging from crystal growth in chemistry and proton diffusion in biomembranes, through tyre aquaplaning and self-cleaning materials. We consider this multi-scale problem specifically for coupled bulk-surface fluid flow. Simulating these problems with traditional fluid solvers is challenging because of the different scale of the surface phenomena versus that in the bulk. Towards this end, specialized thin film flow models have been developed to accurately capture surface-level flow effects. However, it remains impossible to automatically detect the formation of thin fluid sheets and resolve the bulk/sheet coupled flow. This limits the application of thin film models. Advances made in thin film modelling have not been applied to complex flow situations where, for example, a free flowing bulk fluid can form thin films over an obstacle, or where sufficient fluid collects on a moving thin fluid sheet to obtain bulk flow. Such problems rely on bulk flow simulations with significantly finer resolutions to capture the surface-level effects, which dramatically increases computation time making full dynamic simulations unrealistic for actual applications.The primary objective of this project is to model bulk/surface flow phenomena numerically. We will propose novel mathematical models to computationally simulate flow of thin fluid sheets on moving curved surfaces, which can predict not just the evolution of an existing film, but also their formation, collapse and break up. We will develop efficient methods to two-way couple film flow with bulk fluid flow which are able to identify regions where surface level effects are relevant, on the fly. This fellowship will build on the expertise in fluid flow and particle methods of the researcher, and that in multi scale modeling, free boundary problems and advanced discretisation adaptivity of the host.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITE DU LUXEMBOURG · ESCH-SUR-ALZETTECoordinatorLuxembourg
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union