The Implementation of Gas-liquid Two-phase Flow Simulations with Surfactant Transport Based on GPU Computing and Adaptive Mesh Refinement

Abstract

We proposed an implementation for surfactant transport simulations in gas-liquid two-phase flows. This implementation employs a tree-based interface-adapted adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method, assigning a high-resolution mesh around the interface region, significantly reducing computational resources, such as memory and execution time. We developed GPU code by CUDA programming language for the AMR method to further enhance performance through GPU parallel computing. The piece-wise linear interface calculation (PLIC) method, an interface-capturing approach for two-phase flows, is implemented based on the tree-based AMR method and GPU computing. We adopted the height function (HF) method to calculate interface curvature for surface tension assessment to suppress the spurious currents, and implemented it on the AMR mesh as well. We incorporated the Langmuir model to describe surfactant transport, as well as surfactant adsorption and desorption at the gas-liquid interface. Our implementation was applied to simulate a two-dimensional process where a bubble freely rises to the liquid surface, forms a thin liquid film, and eventually results in the film’s rupture. This simulation confirmed a reduction in the number of mesh grids required with our proposed implementations.