water rivulet on a circular cylinder
 

Dear all,

I would like to simulate the dynamic equilibrium of a water rivulet on a bridge cable with OpenFOAM 2.4.0. Now the model is simplified to a 2D problem, as shown in the figure. The water rivulet on the cable fluctuates with the pressure variation induced by the Karman vortex from the cylinder. Mainly I would like to extract the dynamic drag and lift forces on the cylinder.

I am considering two ways. The first one is regard the water rivulet as a rigid body, the shape of which does not change according to the wind pressure. In this case I will need a dynamic mesh like the movingCone tutorial case. However, since the motion of the rivulet might be large, I'm afraid the deformation of the mesh near the cylinder surface will deteriorate very severely.

The second way is making use of the VOF solvers like interFoam or interDyMFoam. In this case the shape of the rivulet will also deform. Currently I am setting up the test cases in this scenario. However, I do not have much experience with VOF method and I'm not sure whether this will succeed.

As I am testing my cases I also would like to hear your suggestion on this topic. Any advice or comment is much appreciated.