Conservative Level Set/Ghost Fluid Method for Simulating Primary Atomization

This paper presents a novel approach for simulating incompressible two-phase flows by combining a conservative level set technique and the ghost-fluid method. Following the ideas of Olsson and Kreiss (2005), the liquid-gas interface is localized using a hyperbolic tangent level set that is transported and reinitialized using fully conservative numerical schemes. Mass conservation issues are greatly reduced in the process, therefore eliminating one of the major limitations of the level set technique. The ghost-fluid method provides a way of handling the interfacial forces and large density jumps associated with two-phase flows with good accuracy, while avoiding artificial spreading of the interface. This methodology is applied to simple test cases to assess its performance. We then use this technique to simulate the turbulent atomization of a liquid diesel jet. ∗Corresponding Author