A front tracking method for computational modeling of temperature and species gradient based phase change

Abstract

A front-tracking method is developed for the direct numerical simulation of evaporation process in a liquid–gas multiphase system. One-field formulation is used to solve the flow, energy and species equations in the framework of the front tracking method, with suitable jump conditions at the interface. Both phases are assumed to be incompressible; however, the divergence-free velocity field condition is modified to account for the phase-change/mass-transfer at the interface. Both temperature and species gradient driven evaporation/phase-change processes are simulated. For the species gradient driven phase change process, the Clausius–Clapeyron equilibrium relation is used to find the vapor mass fraction and subsequently the evaporation mass flux at the interface. A number of benchmark cases are first studied to validate the implementation. The numerical results are found to be in excellent agreement with the analytical solutions for all the studied cases. The methods are then applied to study the evaporation of a static as well as a single and two droplets systems falling in the gravitational field. The methods are demonstrated to be grid convergent and the mass is globally conserved during the phase change process for both the static and moving droplet cases.