A coupled volume-of-fluid and level set method in

interDyMFoam solver
Ahmad Baniabedalruhman
Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
E-mail: ahmad_a@yu.edu.jo
Received 19 February 2020; accepted 27 February 2020
DOI https://doi.org/10.21595/vp.2020.21342
Copyright © 2020 Ahmad Baniabedalruhman. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract. InterDyMFoam is a solver for calculating immiscible two-phase flow in an open source
OpenFOAM software. The solver uses the volume-of-fluid method (VOF) for capturing the
fluid-fluid interface. The solver is modified to work with the coupled VOF and level set (LS)
method. In the proposed method, the VOF is used to capture the interface since it is a mass
conserving and the LS is used to calculate the curvature and physical quantities near the interface.
A bubble rising in column liquids is used to compare the solvers. The proposed method gives an
accurate calculations for the physical properties in two phase flow problems and handles the
topological change of the interface.
Keywords: openFoam, interDyMFoam, volume of fluid, level set, bubble rising.

1. Introduction

The study of two-phase flow is very important because their various industrial applications.
Their applications includes spray, lubrication and food stuff processing. Capturing the interface
in incompressible two-phase flow is a challenging problem in computational fluid dynamics. The
most popular methods for capturing the interface are the level set and volume-of-fluid. In the level
set method [1], the signed distance function 𝜑 is used to describe the interface, where the value of
𝜑 is negative in the continuous phase, positive in the disperse phase and zero at the interface.
Moreover, the level set function is smooth, giving an accurate curvature 𝓀. The VOF [2] uses the
volume fraction function 𝛼 instead of the level set function. The volume fraction 𝛼 takes the value
of one in the dispersed phase and zero in the continuous phase. In addition, 𝛼 is between zero and
one in the cells that contain the interface. The VOF has a challenge in calculating the curvature 𝓀
because the volume fraction function is discontinuous. On the other hand, the VOF is a mass
conserving which is not the case in the level set method. In order to get an accurate calculation of
the two-phase flow, a coupled VOF and LS method is used. In other words, the mass conservation
in the VOF is combined with calculating 𝓀 and other physical properties using the LS method.
The interDyMFoam solver in OpenFOAM for 3D is modified to work with 2D planar and
axisymmetric flows [3, 4]. The interDyMFoam for 2D is achieved to use the coupled VOF and LS
method instead of using the VOF method only.

2. Main result

The solver interDyMFoam solves a two-phase flow problem for velocity 𝐮, pressure 𝑝 and
interface location. The continuity, momentum, and volume fraction equations are respectively
given by:

∇ ∙ 𝐮 0, (1)
𝜕 𝜌𝐮
∇ 𝜌𝐮𝐮 −∇𝑝 ∇ ∙ 𝜂𝛄 𝐅 𝜌𝐠, (2)
𝜕𝑡
𝜕𝛼
∇ 𝛼𝐮 0, (3)
𝜕𝑡

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AHMAD BANIABEDALRUHMAN

where 𝜌 is the density, 𝜂 is the viscosity, 𝛾 = ∇𝐮 + (∇𝐮) is the rate-of-strain tensor and 𝐠 is the
gravity. Moreover, 𝐅 = 𝜎𝓀𝐧𝛿 represents the surface force tension, where 𝜎 is the interfacial
tension, 𝐧 is the unit normal vector on the interface and 𝛿 is the Dirac delta function.
In the VOF, the density and viscosity are respectively calculated as 𝜌(𝛼) = 𝛼𝜌 + (1 − 𝛼)𝜌
and 𝜂(𝛼) = 𝛼𝜂 + (1 − 𝛼)𝜂 where the subscript represents the fluid phase. In the coupled VOF
and LS method, only Eq. (3) is solved to find the volume fraction function. In addition, the LS
function is initialized from the VOF function 𝛼 as, 𝜑 = 1.5Δ𝑥(𝛼 − 0.5), where Δ𝑥 is the mesh
cell size. Note that the initial value is positive in the disperse phase and negative in the continuous
phase. The next step is to solve the re-initialization equation to assign the LS function to a signed
distance function:

𝜕𝜑
= sign(𝜑 )(1 − |∇𝜑|), (4)
𝜕𝜏
where 𝜏 is the artificial time. The LS function at the beginning of the iterations is
𝜑(𝑥, 0) = 𝜑 (𝑥).
The unit normal and the curvature are respectively computed using the LS function as,
𝐧 = ∇𝜑⁄|∇𝜑| and 𝓀 = ∇ ∙ 𝐧. Therefore, the surface tension force is computed using the LS
method as, 𝐅 = 𝜎𝓀(𝜑)𝐧𝛿(𝜑), where 𝛿(𝜑) is defined as:

0, |𝜑| > 𝜖,
𝛿(𝜑) = 1 𝜋𝜑 (5)
1 + cos , |𝜑| ≤ 𝜖.
2𝜖 𝜖
Also, the density and viscosity are calculated using the LS function as, 𝜌(𝜑) = 𝜌 + (𝜌 −
𝜌 )𝐻(𝜑) and 𝜂(𝜑) = 𝜂 + (𝜂 − 𝜂 )𝐻(𝜑), where 𝐻 is the Heaviside function and defined as:

0, 𝜑 < −𝜖,
1 𝜑 1 𝜋𝜑
𝐻(𝜑) = 1 + + sin , |𝜑| ≤ 𝜖, (6)
2 𝜖 𝜖 𝜖
1, 𝜑 > 𝜖.

The above equations are solved using the finite volume method (FVM). In FVM the
computational domain is divided into a finite number of control volumes. Then, the equations are
integrated over a control volume to get integral form of the equations. The integral equations are
discretized using different methods to get the linear system of algebraic equations. In OpenFOAM,
the dynamic mesh refinement works only for hexahedral cells. The boundary conditions for the
LS equation are zeroGradient Which means that the derivative normal to the boundary is zero. For
the other equations, there are several boundary conditions as zeroGradient and fixed value. For
more details see [5].

3. Numerical test

The bubble rising in a column liquid is studied to compare the two solvers. The computational
domain is a channel of length 1 m and hight 2 m. The bubble is a circle of radius 0.25 m and center
(0.5, 0.5). The bubbles at time 𝑡 = 1 and 𝑡 = 2 s are shown in Figs. 1-2, where the bubbles on the
left result from the interDyMFoam solver while the bubbles on the right result from the coupled
interDyMFoam solver. The interface is smeared in the interDyMFoam solver. However, the
coupled interDyMFoam gives a sharper interface.
The velocity and pressure from coupled interDyMFoam for this 2D problem are compared
along the horizontal line 𝑦 = 0 at time 𝑡 = 1 s. Fig. 4 shows the velocity graphs for the same case
with three different meshes: coarse, standard, and fine mesh using the coupled interDyMFoam

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 A COUPLED VOLUME-OF-FLUID AND LEVEL SET METHOD IN INTERDYMFOAM SOLVER.
AHMAD BANIABEDALRUHMAN

solver. The solutions are almost identical outside the bubble and behave similarly inside the
bubble. Also, the graph show a zero velocity outside the bubble which is expected since the top
and bottom walls are fixed. The velocity decreased before the bubble, increased inside the bubble,
and then decreased after the bubble. Note that the graphs from the standard and fine meshes are
almost identical which gives the convergence. Similarly, the pressure graph, Fig. 3, shows the
same convergence. They have the same behavior overall, as the jump in pressure is decreasing by
increasing the mesh resolution using coupled interDyMFoam solver. However, the solutions from
coupled interDyMFoam solver are accurate even on the coarse mesh.

a) b)
Fig. 1. The bubble at time 𝑡 = 1 s using a) interDyMFoam and b) coupled interDyMFoam

a) b)
Fig. 2. The bubble at time 𝑡 = 2 s using a) interDyMFoam and b) coupled interDyMFoam

Fig. 3. Pressure on three different meshes using coupled interDyMFoam solver

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 A COUPLED VOLUME-OF-FLUID AND LEVEL SET METHOD IN INTERDYMFOAM SOLVER.
AHMAD BANIABEDALRUHMAN

Fig. 4. Velocity on three different meshes using coupled interDyMFoam solver

4. Conclusions

The interDyMFoam solver is modified to allow of using VOF and LS methods. The VOF is a
mass conserving and the LS function is continuous to calculate the curvature. The modified solver
is tested on the bubble rising in a liquid column. Moreover, the two solvers are compared on the
same case test. The modified solver gives a sharper interface while the original solver smears the
interface. Also, the convergence is obtained by comparing the pressure and velocity on three
different meshes.

Acknowledgement

Author thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies, College of
Science at Yarmouk University for funding to present this work.

References

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[5] Jasak H. Error Analysis and Estimation in the Finite Volume Method with Applications to Fluid
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