[solved] multiphase solvers alpha sweep not implemented
 

Hej,

I have noticed that in the alphaEqn.H of the multiphase solvers with volume of fluid method (VOF), a correctional sweep is not implemented. The sweep is to make sure that alpha can never be larger than one or smaller than 0, because the method might introduce those small errors. The sweep is proposed in the original paper by Hirt and Nichols (1981).

It becomes apparent that when running a solver (interPhaseChangeFoam), sometimes the alpha value becomes larger than one or smaller than zero.

Does anybody know why this sweep is not implemented? Is there a specific reason?

In think to remember that in interFoam the boundness was treated inside MULES?
Is that not the case in interPhaseChangeFoam?

Sebastian is right. MULES limits alpha/psi/gamma (depends on definition) thanks to psiMin and psiMax parameters, which are normally equal to 0 and 1 respectively.

The only one difference I see between interFoam (or compressibleInterFoam) and interPhaseChangeFoam is that the last one is using implicit instead of explicit method. Maybe that causes the trouble?!

-----
I was digging for something else, but I found something that might be interesting:

yeah, I was able to check it again with the MULES solver and it seems to do the sweep, but never output the cumulative error that forms due to this.

anyway, the third reason cannot hold, because the statistics on alpha1 are only written to log, after all the intermediate results are run. therefore, it does not converge to 1 or 0, which can also clearly be seen when inspecting the results in post-processing.

the reason, that the explicit solver is responsible for this is a valid one. i will have to try and see what else i can do about it.

question on transport properties and setfields in sloshingTank2d
 

Dear all:
In transport properties, dynamic viscosities and densities are defined for phase1 and phase 2. In setFieldsDict, volScalarFieldValue alpha1 for fluid is set to 1 and volScalarFieldValue alpha1 for gas is set to 0. My question is

1. In setFieldsDict, phase for fluid and gas are both called alpha1 (though assigned different values). Is this correct and,
2. How does OpenFOAM know to which part of the model phase1 properties are to be applied and to which part phase 2 properties are to be applied? In other words, where and how does OpenFOAM make a connection between the phase1 and phase2, and alpha1=1 and alpha1=0?

Sorry if this is a dumb question to all the CFD wiz'es out there, but I could not find a relationship between the alpha1's and the phase1 and 2

Thanks to anyone who responds.

hej,

the setFields will only assign 1 and 0, but will not assign something inbetween, even though that would be possible. just think of alpha1 as the first phase, therefore phase1, when a cell contains only phase 1, alpha1=1. if a cell contains only phase2, alpha1=0. Everything in between is a mix of both phases. Meaning that the properties are calculated based on

the connection is made by using alpha1 corresponding to phase1. for two phases there does not need to be a alpha2 because it can easily be calculated from 1-alpha1=alpha2. this saves memory and computation time.

phas and alpha in sloshingTank2D
 

Thank for your response. After reading your response I think I understand what you mean, but still I have the following question:

Say for example, I have a rectangular tank. Two thirds of the tank is water and the remaining one-third is open to the atmosphere. I know when I assign the lower 2/3 of the tank as fluid (alpha1=1), OpenFOAM will know to set the phase of those cells to 1. But how does it know that alpha1=1 means water?In the transportproperties file, I have set phase1 as water and phase2 as air. So how does openFoam know that the property of alpha1=1 should be the property of water, ie, property of alpha1 in the controlDict = property of phase1 in transportProperties?

yes,

the "1" behind the word creates so-to-say the connection. let say you would state that phase1 in the transport properties is set to gas then alpha1=1 would be gas and you all the sudden would set the lower half to gas and the upper part to water, (which by the way can give you a great animation of falling water and some sloshing :) )

understood. Many thanks. Also do you know which segment of the OpenFOAM code processes the alpha and the phase? I tried to find the class that processes trasportproperties and the setFieldsDict, but cant seem to find it. Thanks

setFieldsDict is read and processed by the tool setField, you can find how it does many of those things in the source code

alpha and the phase are processed by the different solvers which deal with mixed phases, and of course with MULES which calculated the transport of alpha