Title
Spontaneous shrinkage of drops and mass conservation in phase-field simulations
Abstract
In this note, we examine the implications of Cahn–Hilliard diffusion on mass conservation when using a phase-field model for simulating two-phase flows. Even though the phase-field variable ϕ is conserved globally, a drop shrinks spontaneously while ϕ shifts from its expected values in the bulk phases. Those changes are found to be proportional to the interfacial thickness, and we suggest guidelines for minimizing the loss of mass. Moreover, there exists a critical radius below which drops will eventually disappear. With a properly chosen mobility parameter, however, this process will be much slower than the physics of interest and thus has little ill effect on the simulation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1016/j.jcp.2006.11.020
Journal of Computational Physics
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Two-phase flow,Diffuse-interface method,Drop deformation,Drop shrinkage,Critical radius
Journal
223
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
0021-9991
10
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.81
2
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Pengtao Yue1434.94
Chunfeng Zhou2413.82
James J. Feng3989.23