Free Surface Simulation of Water Droplet Falling with and without Gravity Effect Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method
Bittagopal Mondal1,a, Ehab Abu-Ramadan1,b, Xianguo Li1,c and Subhash C. Mishra2
1 Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L3G1, Canada.
abittamech@yahoo.co.in
behabar@gmail.com
cx6li@uwaterloo.ca
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati 781 039, India.
scm_iitg@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
A proper water removal from the gas flow channel of PEM fuel cell is very important to enhance the cell performance. The development of a reliable simulation tool is critical to design a proper water removal mechanism. Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is an ideal candidate because of its accuracy and computational advantage. As a preliminary study to develop a suitable model for a two phase flow with different densities (inertia effects), correct interface conditions and both static and moving phase conditions, free falling water droplet is considered. Free surface simulation model is developed using the LBM. In the present simulation, two different shapes of droplet are studied with and without effect of gravity force. In this algorithm, the empty cells are never considered for the computation. Numerical results are compared with the results obtained from the volume of fluid (VOF) method. It is shown that the developed lattice Boltzmann model improves the computational efficiency without sacrificing the underlying physics.
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