A momentum balance correction to the non-conservative one-fluid formulation in boiling flows using volume-of-fluid

A proven methodology to solve multiphase flows is based on the one-fluid formulation of the governing equations, which treats the phase transition across the interface as a single fluid with varying properties and adds additional source terms to satisfy interface jump conditions, e.g., surface tension and mass transfer. Used interchangeably in the limit of non-evaporative flows, recent literature has formalized the inconsistencies that arise in the momentum balance of the non-conservative one-fluid formulation compared to its conservative counterpart when phase change is involved. This translates into an increased sensitivity of the numerical solution to the choice of formulation. Motivated by the fact that many legacy codes using the non-conservative one-fluid formulation have been extended to phase-change simulations, the inclusion of two corrective forces at the interface and a modification of the pressure-velocity solver with an additional predictor-projection step are shown to recover the exact momentum balance in the evaporative non-conservative one-fluid framework for low-viscosity incompressible flows. This has direct implications for obtaining a physically meaningful pressure jump across the interface and is seen to affect the dynamics of two-phase flows. In the high-viscosity domain, the discretization of the viscous term introduces a momentum imbalance which is highly dependent on the chosen method to model the phase transition. In the context of film boiling, this imbalance affects the time scales for the instability growth. Lastly, the need to develop sub-models for heat and mass transfer and for surface tension becomes evident since typical grid resolutions defined as “resolved” in the literature may not be enough to capture interfacial phenomena.