A diffuse-interface approach for modeling transport, diffusion and adsorption/desorption of material quantities on a deformable interface

Abstract

A method is presented to solve two-phase problems involving a material quantity on an interface. The interface can be advected, stretched, and change topology, and material can be adsorbed to or desorbed from it. The method is based on the use of a finit interface framework, which allows a simple implementation using standard finit-diffence or finite-element techniques. Here, finit-diffence methods on a block-structured adaptive grid are used, and the resulting equations are solved using a non-linear multigrid method. Interfacial flow with soluble surfactants is used as an example of the application of the method, and several test cases are presented demonstrating its accuracy and convergence. © 2009 International Press.