A sharp-interface method for the simulation of shock-induced vaporization of droplets

Abstract

A sharp-interface method is developed to calculate the vaporization of droplets in high-speed flows. The levelset method is used to track the liquid-gas interface. A sharp-interface approach using an interfacial Riemann solver based ghost fluid method (RS-GFM) is developed to couple the liquid and gas flow-fields at the interface. The interfacial Riemann problem accounts for surface tension and phase change effects, which affect the jump in pressure and the normal velocity fields across the interface. The current RS-GFM also accounts for the jump in viscous stresses at the interface caused by the Marangoni effect. The resulting sharp-interface approach captures all the first-order physical effects at play in shock-induced droplet vaporization. The method is validated by comparing the current results with benchmark experimental and numerical results. Finally, 2D and 3D simulations of shock-droplet interactions are performed to quantify the shock-induced vaporization rate of the droplets, under the influence of viscosity and surface tension.