PARTICLES 2025

Impact of outlet boundary condition schemes for the lattice Boltzmann method regarding the Stefan phase-change problem

  • Talão Martins, Ivan (University of São Paulo)
  • Cabezas Gómez, Luben (University of São Paulo)
  • Fariñas Alvariño, Pablo (Universidade da Coruña)

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Several industrial devices found in power and refrigerating systems operate using multiphase flows, with or without phase change. Consequently, modelling these processes are very attractive for the scientifical community. In this framework, the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) emerges as an attractive numerical method for this task. Having a mesoscopic nature, the LBM presents advantages to deal with complex geometries and complex processes, such as bubble merging, fluid-structure interaction, etc. Several LBM models for multiphase flows were developed by the research community. Between them, there are the phase-field-based methods, which use two distribution functions for modelling the phase separation and the pressure/momentum field. Usually, in the applications of multiphase flows, there are open boundaries where the fluid with more than one phase leaves the domain. Lou et al. [1] investigated the effect of three boundary condition (BC) schemes using the LBM proposed by He-Cheng-Zhang[2], finding that different behaviours can (merge if incorrect BC schemes are used. They pointed to the convective BC scheme as the best scheme for this task. However, there are few works on the literature regarding the impact of the BC schemes with the Allen-Cahn-based phase-field LBM, especially considering liquid-gas phase change. Then, in this work we explore the impact of three schemes of open BC, the equilibrium scheme, the extrapolation scheme and the convective BC scheme, using the LBM scheme for real fluids proposed by Martins et al. [3]. First, the impact of the BC schemes on a channel flow with a bubble inside is studied. Next, the Stefan problem considering real properties (saturated HFE7100) is simulated. The results shown that both the extrapolation and equilibrium schemes can introduce instabilities and incoherences in the results, while the convective BC is the one who better conserves the coherence of the results.