COMPARISON OF NUMERICAL METHODS FOR TERNARY FLUID FLOWS: IMMERSED BOUNDARY, LEVEL-SET, AND PHASE-FIELD METHODS

Abstract

This paper reviews and compares three different methods for modeling incompressible and immiscible ternary fluid flows: the immersed boundary, level set, and phase-field methods. The immersed boundary method represents the moving interface by tracking the Lagrangian particles. In the level set method, an interface is defined implicitly by using the signed distance function, and its evolution is governed by a transport equation. In the phase-field method, the advective Cahn–Hilliard equation is used as the evolution equation, and its order parameter also implicitly defines an interface. Each method has its merits and demerits. We perform the several simulations under different conditions to examine the merits and demerits of each method. Based on the results, we determine the most suitable method depending on the specific modeling needs of different situations.