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Influence of Contact Angle Boundary Condition on CFD Simulation of T-Junction

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Abstract

In this work, we study the influence of the contact angle boundary condition on 3D CFD simulations of the bubble generation process occurring in a capillary T-junction. Numerical simulations have been performed with the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics solver ANSYS Fluent v15.0.7. Experimental results serve as a reference to validate numerical results for four independent parameters: the bubble generation frequency, volume, velocity and length. CFD simulations accurately reproduce experimental results both from qualitative and quantitative points of view. Numerical results are very sensitive to the gas-liquid-wall contact angle boundary conditions, confirming that this is a fundamental parameter to obtain accurate CFD results for simulations of this kind of problems.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación (Project numbers ESP2016-79196-P and MTM2013-46313-R) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant number 2017-SGR-1278).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escola d’Enginyeria de Telecomunicació i Aeroespacial de Castelldefels, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/ Esteve Terradas 5, 08860, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

    S. Arias

  2. Escola d’Enginyeria de Telecomunicació i Aeroespacial de Castelldefels, Laboratori de Càlcul Numèric (www-lacan.upc.edu), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/ Esteve Terradas 5, 08860, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

    A. Montlaur

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  1. S. Arias
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  2. A. Montlaur
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Correspondence to S. Arias.

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Arias, S., Montlaur, A. Influence of Contact Angle Boundary Condition on CFD Simulation of T-Junction. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 30, 435–443 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-018-9605-x

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