Derivation via Hamilton's principle of a new shallow-water model using a color function for the macroscopic description of partial wetting phenomena

Abstract

This paper presents a new shallow-water type model suitable for the simulation of partially wetting liquid films without the need for very fine resolution of the contact line phenomena, which is particularly suitable for industrial applications. This model is based on the introduction of a color function, propagated at the averaged velocity of the bulk flow, and equal to one where there is a liquid film and zero in the dry zone, which implies a non zero gradient only at the interface. This approach has the advantage of easily locating the interface, allowing to model macroscopically the forces acting at the contact line, which is essential for the simulation of partial wetting phenomena. The formal derivation of this model is based on the principle of least action known as Hamilton's principle. Here this principle is applied in a full Eulerian form to derive the complete system of equations with the color function. This method proves to be particularly suitable for this type of development and as an illustration it is also applied to recover another model proposed by Lallement et al. [39, 73]. Finally, both models are compared from a theoretical point of view and the advantages of the new color function based model are discussed.