A Hybrid Volume-of-Fluid/Euler–Lagrange Method for Vertical Plunging Jet Flows

The vertical plunging jet is a typical multiscale two-phase flow problem in which a large number of microbubbles are formed by the impingement of a liquid jet with a free surface. Traditional numerical simulation methods experience difficulty reproducing both the large-scale phase interface evolution and the small-scale microbubbles at the same time. In this paper, a hybrid volume-of-fluid (VOF)/Euler–Lagrange method is adopted to simulate the vertical plunging jet flow problem. The large-scale air-water interface is captured by the VOF method, and the microbubbles are modeled as Lagrange points. Special algorithms are designed to realize a smooth transformation between two frameworks. Results indicate that satisfactory multiscale two-phase flow capture accuracy can be achieved with high efficiency by using the new method.