ALE finite element method for gas-liquid two-phase flow including moving boundary based on an incompressible two-fluid model

This paper proposes an ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian) finite element method for gas-liquid two-phase flow, based on an incompressible two-fluid model, to analyze the two-phase flow including moving boundaries. The basic equations are derived by describing the two-fluid model in the ALE form. The solution algorithm is parallel to a fractional step method, and the Galerkin method is employed for the formulation. A quadrilateral element with four nodes is used for the discretization of the computational domain. The present method is also applied to calculate the flow around a circular cylinder, which is forced to oscillate in a quiescent air-water two-phase mixture. The drag coefficients of the cylinder exhibit periodical change in accordance with the variation of the flow around the cylinder. The time variations of the flow field and drag coefficients are discussed in relation to the oscillation of the cylinder. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.