Modelling and Simulation of High-viscosity, Non Iso-thermal Fluids with
a Free Surface
Dimitri Harder, Edmond Skeli and Dirk Weidemann
Institute of System Dynamics and Mechatronics, University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
Keywords:
Navier-Stokes, Differential-Algebraic Equation, Marker and Cell, Fluid Simulation, Free Surface.
Abstract:
With the aim of using efficient control and/or diagnostic methods, more and more companies in the process en-
gineering industry are using mathematical models to describe the underlying physical processes in sufficient
detail. Against this background, the modeling and simulation of the behaviour of a non-isothermal, highly
viscous fluid flow is examined in this paper. The behaviour of the fluid is decribed by a system of partial dif-
ferential equations, which includes the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations as well as the thermal energy
equation. With regard to the numerical calculation of the process variables, a combination of the Marker and
Cell (MAC) method and a temperature calculation on a curvilinear grid is presented. The MAC method is
used to identify the free surface by inserting particles without masses over the initialized fluid area and mo-
ving them with the calculated velocities. A characteristic feature of the typical use of the MAC method is that
the defining partial differential equations are discretized spatially on a rectangular grid. However, this leads to
the problem that a large part of the grid nodes lies within the obstacles which are surrounded by the fluid. In
the present model, on the other hand, a curvilinear grid is used. The main advantage of this is that the outer
grid nodes lie directly on the surrounding obstacles, resulting in a reduced system of differential-algebraic
equations.
1 INTRODUCTION
The subject of this paper is the modelling and simu-
lation of a non-isothermal, highly viscous fluid which
enters between two counter-rotating cylinders. At the
beginning there is no fluid between the cylinders. This
space is filled with fluid only when entering. The en-
try of the fluid is an unsteady process in which the po-
sition of the fluid free surface changes over time. With
regard to the determination of fluid behavior, know-
ledge of the temporal change of the fluid surface is
important. Harlow and Welch (Harlow and Welch,
1965) first introduced a technique to calculate the
time-dependent incompressible Navier-Stokes equa-
tions with a free surface, the Marker and Cell (MAC)
method. Amsden and Harlow (Amsden and Harlow,
1970) simplified the MAC method by decoupling the
speed from the pressure calculation. The works of
(Tome et al., 2000; McKee et al., 2008) describe the
MAC method in three-dimensional space. An over-
view of other methods for determining a free surface
area can be found in the literature (Weston, 2000).
In contrast to the flow models of the literature lis-
ted above, models in control systems are expressed in
state-space form. For such models, however, the num-
ber of states is kept small in order to realize efficient
control and/or diagnostic methods (Jones et al., 2015).
For control models, there is a balance between re-
ducing complexity and increasing model uncertainty.
Since linearized models are commonly used in con-
trol models, numerous studies have been carried out
which linearize the Navier-Stokes equations around a
chosen steady state flow condition (Jovanovic and Ba-
mieh, 2001; Dellar and Jones, 2016; Aamo and Krs-
tic, 2003). All these models resemble that they are
considered in a closed fluid space, in other words, the
presence of a free surface in such models has not yet
been taken into account. This complicates the model
by the state of a free surface.
In this paper the focus is on the nonlinear Navier-
Stokes equations and a reduction of the dimension
of the differential-algebraic system (DAE-system),
which we obtain after a suitable spatial discretization.
In the model, a curvilinear grid is used instead of a
rectangular grid. The main advantage of the curvili-
near grid is that the outer nodes are located on the sur-
face of the cylinders, while the outer nodes of the rec-
tangular grid are located inside the cylinders. Thus,
Harder, D., Skeli, E. and Weidemann, D.
Modelling and Simulation of High-viscosity, Non Iso-thermal Fluids with a Free Surface.
DOI: 10.5220/0006857405570563
In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2018) - Volume 2, pages 557-563
ISBN: 978-989-758-321-6
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
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