A conservative level set method for liquid–gas flows with application in liquid jet atomisation

In this paper, a methodology for modelling two-phase flows based on a conservative level set method in the framework of finite volume method is presented. The novelty of the interface capturing method used here lies on the advection of level set which is solved with a WENO scheme and corrected with a novel re-initialisation method for retaining its signed distance function character. The coupling with the volume of fluid method is done with a simple algebraic approach, and with the new algorithm the accumulated mass conservation errors remain reasonably low. The paper presents a unique coupling between the level set method and the Eulerian–Lagrangian Spray Atomisation approach for modelling spray dispersion in liquid atomisation systems. The method is shown to have good accuracy providing similar results to other numerical codes for the classical tests presented. Preliminary results are also shown for three-dimensional simulations of the primary break-up of a turbulent liquid jet obtaining results comparable to direct numerical simulations. Consequently, the coupled method can be used for simulating various two-phase flow applications offering an accurate representation of the interface dynamics.