A two-way coupling approach for simulating bouncing droplets

Abstract

This article presents a two-way coupling approach to simulate bouncing droplet phenomena by incorporating the lubricated thin aerodynamic gap between fluid volumes. At the heart of our framework lies a cut-cell representation of the thin air film between colliding liquid fluid volumes. The air pressures within the thin film, modeled using a reduced fluid model based on the lubrication theory, are coupled with the volumetric liquid pressures by the gradient across the liquid–air interfaces and solved in a monolithic two-way coupling system. Our method can accurately solve liquid–liquid interaction with air films without adaptive grid refinements, enabling accurate simulation of many novel surface-tension-driven phenomena such as droplet collisions, bouncing droplets, and promenading pairs.