Large eddy simulation of multiphase flows using the volume of fluid method: Part 2—A-posteriori analysis of liquid jet atomization

Multiphase flows with two or more immiscible liquids, separated by a sharp interface with surface tension, occur in a large variety of environmental and industrial flow problems. The ability to accurately predict such flows has implications for safety, economy, and ecology. As a scale resolving technique, large eddy simulation (LES) is a turbulence model that has the potential to describe such flows with good accuracy. However, during the filtering process of the two-phase flow equations, several unclosed terms appear that are unknown from single-phase flow and their modelling is not yet standardized in the open literature. In this paper, the unknown terms are systematically analyzed based on a-posteriori LES and comparison with a direct numerical simulation (DNS) database. It is shown that the closures for each unknown term strongly interact with the other terms and as well with the numerical scheme. Therefore, only a modelling strategy consisting of a complete set of sub-models and numerical discretization can be identified, rather than individual optimal models. Several promising alternatives are identified and discussed, based on existing and newly developed turbulence and interfacial subgrid scale (SGS) closures.