Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.

254 (2013) 99–113

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Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cma

Numerical investigation of Newtonian and non-Newtonian multiphase flows using

ISPH method
A. Zainali, N. Tofighi, M.S. Shadloo, M. Yildiz ⇑
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Advanced Composites and Polymer Processing Laboratory, Sabanci University, Orhanli-Tuzla, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We have presented a multiphase incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics method with an
Received 21 February 2012 improved interface treatment procedure. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the interface treatment
Received in revised form 16 August 2012 which can handle multiphase flow problems with high density and viscosity ratios, we have modeled sev-
Accepted 5 October 2012
eral challenging two phase flow problems; namely, single vortex flow, square droplet deformation, drop-
Available online 9 November 2012
let deformation in shear flow, and finally the Newtonian bubble rising in viscous and viscoelastic liquids.
The proposed interface treatment includes the usage of (i) different smoothing functions (in this work,
Keywords:
cubic spline kernel function for discretizing equations associated with the calculation of the surface ten-
Multiphase flow
Surface tension
sion force while the quintic spline for the discretization of governing equations and the relevant bound-
Droplet deformation ary conditions), and (ii) a new discretization scheme for calculating the pressure gradient. It is shown that
Continuum surface force (CSF) with the application of the improved interface treatment, it becomes possible to model multiphase flow
Interface problems with the density and viscosity ratios up to 1000 and 100 respectively while using standard pro-
Projection method jection method. The utilization of cubic spline for the continuum surface force model significantly
improves the quality of the calculated interface, thereby eliminating the interphase particle penetrations,
and in turn leading to the calculation of more accurate velocity and pressure fields.
Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction [2] are Eulerian methods widely used in computational fluid

Multiphase flow where two or more fluids have interfacial sur-
faces is one of the challenging and difficult areas in the field of
computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which plays an important role
in many industrial and natural systems such as cavitation, boiling
heat transfer, air entrainment at ocean surfaces and bubble reac-
tors, among others.
Multiphase flow problems so far have been studied widely
using mesh dependent techniques. Nevertheless, because of the
complexity of these problems mainly associated with the necessity
of tracking interface evolution, most of the early works have not
gone beyond simple problems. As can be inferred, the interface
evolution is crucial to modeling of multiphase flows and thus,
needs to be modeled correctly and carefully in order to obtain reli-
able simulation results. In mesh-dependent methods, an additional
set of equations might need to be solved to track interfacial sur-
faces, and furthermore, depending on the problem at hand (i.e., if
the topology of the flows deforms significantly), mesh-refinement
might be required. In literature, different methods have been pro-
posed and used to capture the interface evolution on a regular grid.
Among them, volume of fluid (VOF) [1] and level set (LS) methods
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: meyildiz@sabanciuniv.edu (M. Yildiz).
dynamics. These methods are generally associated with difficulties
in handling large topological deformation. Another category be-
longs to a Lagrangian–Eulerian hybrid method such as front track-
ing method [3,4] in which external elements or markers are used to
track the interface explicitly.
An alternative to the above-mentioned interface capturing ap-
proaches can be purely Lagrangain methods. The Lagrangian nat-
ure makes them potentially better candidates for tracking the
interfaces with large deformations. Being a well-advanced member
of Lagrangain methods, the SPH technique in particular is an excel-
lent candidate to model complex multiphase flow problems owing
to its obvious advantages such that it notably facilitates the track-
ing of multiphase interfaces and the incorporation of interfacial
forces into governing equations, allows for modeling large topolog-
ical deformations in flow, and does not require connected grid
points for calculating partial differential terms in governing equa-
tions. Thus, it has recently received a great deal of attention for
modeling multiphase flow problems [5–14].
In SPH literature, there are two commonly utilized approaches
for enforcing the incompressibility condition in governing flow
equations; namely the incompressible SPH (ISPH), and the weakly
compressible SPH (WCSPH) methods. There are several recent
works which have aimed to compare ISPH against WCSPH for free
surface and bluff body problems [15–19].

0045-7825/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2012.10.005
100 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113
In this study, we will only consider the ISPH method based on
the projection method initially proposed by Cummins and Rudman
[20]. The original ISPH method has been reported to suffer from the
particle distortion and clustering. Hence, in following works by
other SPH researchers [21–27], several different remedies have
been proposed to circumvent associated problems.
Different approaches have been proposed and used in literature
to incorporate the surface tension force into the momentum bal-
ance equations, e.g. [28–31,13]. Morris in [29] used the continuum
surface force (CSF) model originally proposed by Backbill et al. in
[32] to simulate two phase flows using the WCSPH method. How-
ever, in this work, the CSF method was tested on rather simple
multiphase benchmark problems with density and viscosity ratios
equal to 1. Although the outcomes of the reported simulations are
fairly good, the paper lacks in demonstrating the true nature (i.e.,
advantages and limitations) of the SPH implementation of the
CSF model. In later works in literature, it has been reported that
the CSF method is quite sensitive to the uniformity of the particle
distribution and therefore suffers from errors in the curvature cal-
culation, which leads to inaccurate surface tension force calcula-
tion and consequently introduces some errors to the simulations
[31]. An alternative interface treatment approach originally sug-
gested and used by Jacqmin [33] was implemented to the SPH
modeling of multiphase problems in the work of Hu and Adams
[30] with the purpose of remedying these problems in question,
which is referred to as continuum surface tension model (CST).
The CST method is an extension of the CSF method in that the sur-
face tension force is calculated through taking the divergence of
the projection tensor so that the curvature is not explicitly calcu-
lated. Even though, both forms are equivalent to each other theo-
retically, in our ongoing work, unlike the statement of Hu and
Adams [30], we have found that the CSF method produces a more
accurate surface tension force than the CST method.
In some relevant SPH multiphase literature, it has been reported
that the standard SPH formulations (i.e., density based approach)
fail to simulate multiphase flows with a large variation in the
transport parameters of constituents across the interface [5,6]. In
[14,34], different approaches have been proposed to remedy this
problem. However, it should be stated that non of these methods
conserves the continuity equation accurately. Later, a conservative
method based on number density was proposed in [30,35].
Despite the several advantages which can make ISPH method
more favorable than WCSPH in multiphase flow simulations such
that the ISPH method allows for more accurate pressure field pre-
diction and being computationally more efficient [19,27], only a
few works, e.g. [23,36] have reported the ISPH simulation of mul-
tiphase flows. In this study, we have developed a 2D ISPH algo-
rithm to address above elaborated challenges through simulating
a wide variety of Newtonian and Non-Newtonian multiphase prob-
lems. Namely, the test cases include single vortex flow, square
droplet deformation under the effect of surface tension force, bub-
ble deformation in a Non-Newtonian shear flow, Newtonian bub-
ble rising in viscous and viscoelastic liquids subjected to the
combined effects of surface tension and buoyancy forces. For the
solution of these benchmark problems, we have suggested and
used an improved interface treatment approach based on the CSF
method, which utilizes cubic spline for discretizing equations asso-
ciated with the calculation of the surface tension force while the
quintic spline for the discretization of governing equations and
the relevant boundary conditions, the smoothed transport param-
eters through combining weighted arithmetic and harmonic inter-
polations, and a new discretization scheme for calculating the
pressure gradient. To the authors best knowledge, within the con-
text of multiphase SPH, no previous research has considered the
utilization of two different kernels for interface and governing
equations. As substantiated by numerical simulations and in turn
results, the usage of the cubic spline function for the interface pro-
duces a thinner interface thereby preventing the fluid particles
from penetrating into the droplet domain and hence leading to
the smoother interface prediction. It is demonstrated that the
new interface treatment is quite effective to model multiphase
flow problems with the density and viscosity ratios up to 1000
and 100, respectively and the usage of cubic spline for the CSF
model significantly improves the quality of the calculated interface
in terms of its thickness and sharpness, thereby eliminating the
interphase particle penetrations, and in turn leading to the calcula-
tion of more accurate velocity and pressure fields. The new inter-
face treatment method is extensively tested on the above given
benchmark problems and the results of these simulations are val-
idated against available numerical and experimental data in liter-
ature, and excellent agreement is observed between ISPH and
literature results. It is worthy of mentioning that in the multiphase
flow modeling, we have used the improved ISPH method reported
in [27,19].
The rest of this paper is organized as follow. Section 2 concisely
describes the mathematical formulations as well as numerical
schemes implemented. In Section 3, selected numerical results
are presented and compared against available numerical and theo-
retical results in literature. The presented work is concluded with a
final remark in Section 4.
2. Mathematical formulations
In this section, the governing equations for a non-Newtonian
fluid with the Oldroyd-B constitutive equation are presented. Then,
the ISPH method and the numerical algorithm are briefly
discussed.
2.1. Governing equations
The mass and momentum conservation equations for incom-
pressible flow can be written respectively as,
$  u ¼ 0; ð1Þ
Du
q ¼ $p þ $  s þ qg þ f ðsv Þ ; ð2Þ
Dt
where u is the velocity vector, p is the pressure, t is the time, q is the
density, g is the gravitational acceleration, s is the viscoelastic stress
tensor (also widely referred to as the extra stress tensor), f ðsv Þ is
volumetric surface tension force and D=Dt ¼ @=@t þ ul @=@xl is the
material time derivative. The Oldroyd-B constitutive equation for
the extra stress tensor in the momentum balance equation is writ-
ten as [37]
 
^ ;
s þ k1 s^ ¼ l D þ k2 D ð3Þ
T
where D ¼ $u þ ð$uÞ is the deformation rate tensor, l is the zero-
shear-rate viscosity, k1 and k2 are the relaxation and retardation
times, respectively. Finally, the hat sign ^ denotes contravariant
convected time derivative operator,
Ds Dsij
s^ ¼  ð$uÞT  s  s  ð$uÞ ¼  ui;k skj  uj;k sik : ð4Þ
Dt Dt
The extra stress tensor s may be split into two parts as
s ¼ sp þ sn where sp and sn ¼ lðk2 =k1 ÞD represent non-Newtonian
and Newtonian contributions to extra the stress tensor, respec-
tively. Upon casting the relation s ¼ sp þ sn into Eq. (3), the non-
Newtonian contribution to the extra stress tensor can be written
as,
sp þ k1 s^p ¼ lð1  bÞD; ð5Þ
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 101

where b ¼ k2 =k1 . It is easy to show that upon choosing b ¼ 1, the ql c_ D2 Dc_ ll

Oldroyd-B constitutive relation in Eq. (3) will reduce to one for Re ¼ ; De ¼ k1 c_ ; Ca ¼
ll r
Newtonian fluids with l being the viscosity.
which are obtained through using the following dimensionless
2.2. Interfacial forces parameters;
x t u p
Consider infinitesimally small surface element, dA at an arbi- x ¼ ; t ¼ ; u ¼ ; p ¼ ;
trary interface between two immiscible fluids as shown in
D c_ 1 c_ D ql U 2tb
Fig. 1a. The local force balance on this element can be written as,
  q l j
sAtot  sBtot  ~
nþf ¼ 0; ð6Þ q ¼ ; l ¼ ; j ¼ 1 :
ðsaÞ ql ll D
where sAtot ¼ pA I þ sA and sBtot ¼ pB I þ sB are the total stress ten- Here, c_ ¼ U tb =Ly is the shear rate where Ly is the height of the chan-
sors in fluids A and B approaching the interface, ~ n is the unit normal nel (see Section 3) and U tb ¼ U t  U b is the velocity difference be-
vector to the interface, and f ðsaÞ ¼ rj~ n is the surface tension force tween the top and the bottom boundaries. The problems are
acting on the interface in the unit normal direction where r is the characterized by density ratio, ql =qb , viscosity ratio, ll =lb , together
surface tension coefficient which is assumed to be constant and with the Re; Bo; Ca and De numbers. Re number determines the ratio
j ¼ $  ~ n is the interface curvature. However, this force is a local of the inertial to the viscous forces. Bo and Ca numbers determine
surface force and the calculation of which requires the solution of the ratio of the gravitational and viscous forces to the surface ten-
two separate sets of governing equations for fluids A and B. For sion forces, respectively. When the viscoelastic polymeric liquid is
the sake of computational simplicity and efficiency, it is preferable deformed under the action of either stretching or shearing, or the
to express the local surface force f ðsaÞ as an equivalent volumetric combination of these two processes, the polymer molecules get
force f ðsv Þ (the force per unit volume) as is done in the continuum stretched and entangled. If the polymeric fluid is exposed to a defor-
surface force (CSF) method originally proposed by Brackbill et al. in mation for a short period of time, polymer molecules do remember
[32]. The basic concept behind this approach is to replace the sharp their initial configuration, thereby being able to recover their initial
interface between two fluids with a transition region of a finite shape. On the other hand, if the deformation is applied for an ex-
thickness as shown in Fig. 1(b). This can be fulfilled through multi- tended period of time, the polymer molecules tend to forget their
plying the local surface tension force with a one-dimensional delta initial positions, and in turn can not recover their original shape.
function, d This time dependent phenomenon is known as the viscoelastic
f ðsv Þ ¼ rj~
nd: ð7Þ memory effect or the stress relaxation effect. The viscoelastic mem-
ory of polymeric materials is scaled with Deborah number,
De ¼ k1 =t, which is defined as the ratio of the material relaxation
2.3. Dimensionless parameters time to the time scale of the flow. Note that the polymeric liquid be-
haves as a viscous fluid if De goes to zero, while acts as an elastic
In this subsection, we present important dimensionless param- solid if De goes to infinity.
eters which will be used throughout the paper. Upon introducing
the following dimensionless parameters,
2.4. ISPH formulations and numerical method
x  t  u  p
x ¼ ; t ¼ ; u ¼ ; p ¼ ;
D 1
D2 g 2
1
ðgDÞ2
1
ql gD For the clarity of the presentation, it is worthy of introducing
notational conventions to be used throughout this article. All vec-
q l j tor and tensorial quantities are written either using suffix notation
q ¼ ; l ¼ ; j ¼ 1
ql ll D with Latin indices denoting the components or direct notation with
boldface letters. These components will be written either as sub-
into the linear momentum balance and Oldroyd-B constitutive
scripts (when particle identifiers are not used) or superscripts
equations, one can obtain dimensionless Reynolds, Re, Bond, Bo,
(when particle identifiers are used). As well, throughout this article
and Deborah, De numbers as,
the Einstein summation convention is employed whereby any re-
1
ql g 2 D2
3
q gD2 k1 g 2
1 peated component index is summed over the range of the index.
Re ¼ ; Bo ¼ l ; De ¼ 1 ; These superscripts do not represent any covariant or contravariant
ll r D2 nature. Latin boldface indices ði; jÞ will be used as particle identifi-
where D is the characteristic length which is taken as a bubble ers to denote particles and will always be placed as subscripts that
diameter, and subscripts l and b denote the base fluid and the bub- are not summed unless used under the summation symbol. For
ble, respectively (see Section 3). However, for the shear flow, the example, the position vector for particle i is r i ¼ xki ~ ek where xki de-
following Reynolds, Re, Capillary, Ca, and Deborah, De are used in- notes the components of the position vector and ~ ek is the base vec-
stead of above given Re; Bo and De numbers, tor. The distance  vector  between a pair of particles is indicated by
r ij ¼ r i  r j ¼ xki  xkj ~ek , and the magnitude of the distance vector
jr ij j is denoted by r ij .
In the SPH method, the value of an arbitrary field f for the par-
ticle i can be calculated using the neighbor field values through the
(a) (b) formulation,
fluid A fluid A Z
 
f ðr i Þ ffi hf jðr i Þi  f r j W ij dr3j ; ð8Þ
X
interface
where the angle bracket h i denotes the kernel approximation, W ij is
fluid B transition region fluid B
a kernel function, r j is the position vector of particle j, and dr 3j is a
differential volume element within the total bounded volume of the
Fig. 1. 2D sketch of an arbitrary interface between two immiscible fluids A and B. domain X. Throughout this study, the following cubic spline kernel
102 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113

 
[38] is used for the discretization of partial differential equations $C
j ¼ $  : ð18Þ
relevant to the calculation of the surface tension force, j$Cj
82
> 3  q2 þ 12 q3 ; 0 6 q 6 1; Here, it should be noted that unit normals in the vicinity of the
15 < 1 fringes of the interface might be erroneous and in turn, when used
W ij ¼ 2 ð2  qÞ3 ; 1 6 q 6 2; ð9Þ
7ph >:6 in the computation of the curvature, may produce faulty results.
0; 2 6 q;
Therefore, a constraint is required to choose reliable normals as also
while the quintic spline [39] is employed for the rest of the pointed out in [29]. In this direction, we have used the constraint of
calculations, j$C i j > =h where  is a constant used to control the thickness of the
8 interface. In this work, we have set that  ¼ 0:08, and particles sat-
>
> ð3  qÞ5  6ð2  qÞ5 þ 15ð1  qÞ5 ; 0 6 q 6 1; isfying this condition are regarded to be interface particles with
>
>
<
7 ð3  qÞ5  6ð2  qÞ5 ; 1 6 q 6 2; reliable unit normals. Finally, substituting Eqs. (17) and (18) into
W ij ¼ 2
478ph >> ð3  qÞ5 ;
> 2 6 q 6 3; Eq. (7) one can rearrange the volumetric surface force as,
>
:  
0; 3 6 q; $C
f ðsv Þ ¼ r$  $C: ð19Þ
ð10Þ j$Cj
 
where we have used a concise notation, i.e. W ij ¼ W r ij ; h . Here,
q ¼ rij =h and h denotes the smoothing length. It is important to note 2.4.2. Numerical method and discretization
that using the cubic spline for calculating the surface tension force Masses of particles are calculated using the relation qi =wo
while the quintic spline for the discretization of flow equations en- where wo ¼ max ðwi Þ is the initial or reference number density.
hances the accuracy of interface tracking and at the same time helps Hence, particles of dissimilar phases have different masses which
avoiding the numerical instabilities mainly arising from the solu- are kept constant throughout the simulation. Once entering into
tion of pressure Poisson equation with the cubic spline. The effect the outermost time loop, the time step is calculated adaptively
of utilizing different kernels in simulations is discussed in more de- through the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition as
tail in Section 3. Dt 6 C CFL h=umax where umax is the magnitude of the largest particle
By replacing the integral operation in Eq. (8) with summation velocity in the system, and C CFL is a constant satisfying 0 < C CFL 6 1
operator over all the particles, the SPH interpolation for an arbi- (in this work, C CFL ¼ 0:25).
trary vector valued function f p can be written as, Predictor–corrector method is employed to solve the governing
X1 p equations in time and for time marching, the first-order Euler time
fip ¼ f p ðr i Þ ¼ f W ij ; ð11Þ stepping scheme is used. In the predictor step, prior to advecting
j
wj j
fluid particles to their intermediate position, in a loop, the algo-
where number density for particle i; wi , is defined as rithm computes the average particle spacing for a given particle
X P 
as ri;o ¼ j r ij =N . Thereafter, in a separate loop over all fluid par-
wi ¼ W ij ; ð12Þ
j
ticles, the artificial particle displacement vector, dr i , is calculated
as [27]
which is approximately equal to reciprocal of the corresponding
particle’s volume.
X
N rk
ij
dr ki ¼ a r 2i;o umax Dt; ð20Þ
j
r 3ij
2.4.1. Interface treatment
To be able to distinguish among constituents of an immiscible where N is the number of neighbor particles and a is a problem-
two-phase system, and calculate relevant interface fields (i.e., the dependent parameter set to be equal to 0.06 for all cases studied
interface unit normal, curvature, and interfacial force), each parti- here. As discussed in details in our early works [27,19,40], the arti-
cle is assigned to a color function, ficial particle displacement procedure is utilized for the purpose of
 circumventing the clustering of particles and associated fractures
bi ¼ 1; in fluid A; unavoidably formed in the computational domain due to the fact
C ð13Þ
0; in fluid B: that SPH particles are in the tendency of aligning themselves in
Furthermore, to enhance the robustness of the current method for accordance with streamlines. The implementation of the artificial
simulating flows with higher density and viscosity ratios, the as- particle displacement eliminates these problems gradually and rel-
signed color function is smoothed as evant clustering induced instabilities without causing significant er-
Pb rors in computations.
j C j W ij The polymeric or elastic stress tensor for all particles (fluid and
Ci ¼ : ð14Þ
wi boundary particles) is calculated using explicit first-order forward
To avoid sharp variations in gradients of fields across the inter- time integration as
face, it is prudent to smooth the density and the viscosity of fluids   h iðnÞ
Dt ðnÞ
through using a weighted arithmetic mean interpolation as sðnþ1Þ
p ¼ 1 sp þ Dt ð$uÞT  sp þ sp  ð$uÞ
k1
qi ¼ C i qA þ ð1  C i ÞqB ; ð15Þ l Dt
þ ð1  bÞDðnÞ : ð21Þ
k1
li ¼ C i lA þ ð1  C i ÞlB ; ð16Þ
Then, intermediate positions of particle i are calculated as,
where the smoothed color function C i is used since it represents the
ðnÞ ðnÞ
volume fraction of the fluid A for particle i. ri ¼ ri þ ui Dt þ dri : ð22Þ
In this study, 1D Dirac delta function is approximated by
Subsequently, the intermediate velocity field ui for particle i is cal-
d  j$Cj. The unit normal vector and the curvature can be com-
culated on these intermediate particle locations by solving the
puted as,
momentum balance equations with the forward time integration
$C without the pressure gradient term together with pertinent bound-
~
n¼ ð17Þ
j$Cj ary conditions as
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 103

ðnÞ ðnÞep
ui ¼ ui þ f i Dt; ð23Þ The left hand side of Eq. (31) is discretized using,

where f ep
is the total force applied on particle i (the superscript ep @ 2 fip   X1 p  r s @W
ij ij
i
k k
2 þ ass
i ¼8 fi  fjp 2 s
: ð32Þ
stands for excluding pressure) at time step n, i.e., @xi @xi j
wj r ij
@x i
ðnÞep ðnÞ ðnÞ ðnÞ
f i ¼ r  si þ qgi þ f ðsv Þi : ð24Þ It should be noted that the intermediate particle number density,
w , and intermediate density q are used when solving the pressure
At this stage, first order derivatives are approximated as,
Poisson equation, where the intermediate mixture density is calcu-
P
@fip ks X 1  p  @W
ij lated as, qi ¼ wi a¼1 mai C ai . The resulting linear system of equations
a ¼
k i
fj  fip ð25Þ
@xi j
wj @xsi due to Eq. (31) is solved using an iterative solver based on general-
ized minimal residual (GMRES) method with incomplete LU factor-
except the divergence of the sp which is approximated as ization with no fill-in. Knowing the pressure field inside the
! domain, one may compute the velocity field at time step ðn þ 1Þ
@fip X f p fjp @W ij
¼ wi
i
þ ð26Þ using
@xki j w2i w2j @xki
$pðnþ1Þ
uðnþ1Þ ¼ u  Dt : ð33Þ
while the second order derivatives are approximated as, q
|fflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflffl}
@ 2 fip pm X1 p  r @W
ij ij
p I
a ¼8
k i
fi  fjp 2 m
; ð27Þ
k
@xi @xi wj r ij
@x i
To be able to treat large variations in the density and viscosity
j
(i.e., density and viscosity ratios up to 1000 and 100) across the
where aks
i is a corrective second-rank tensor given by, interfaces in a robust manner without facing pressure related con-
X r kij @W ij vergence issues, the discretization of the pressure gradient term, I,
aks
i ¼ : ð28Þ in Eq. 33 requires a special treatment. It is observed that upon
j
wj @xsi approximating I with Eq. (25), the method suffers from the numer-
ical instabilities when the density ratio of two fluids is high. As a
Such a way of discretizing first and second order partial spatial
remedy, a new discretization method is proposed instead of the
derivatives are referred to as the corrective SPH gradient formula-
one given in Eq. (25) for calculating the pressure gradient. In what
tion that can be used to eliminate particle inconsistencies [27,19].
follows, the pressure gradient denoted by I can be rearranged as,
It should be noted that the corrective term aks i is ideally equal to    
Kronecker delta, dks , for a continuous function. On using Kronecker 1 p 1
$p ¼ $  p$ : ð34Þ
delta in Eq. (25), one can obtain the SPH gradient formulation of a q q q
vector-valued function commonly seen in the SPH literature. It
The right hand side of Eq. (34) can be discretized by using Eq. (25)
should be noted that the corrective SPH formulation requires the
as
inversion of aks
i , which might be singular for a highly irregular par- " ! !# !
ticle distribution. However, we have not experienced any difficul- 1 @pi  ks 1 X 1 pj pi pi pi @W ij
ties related to aks corrective tensor being singular for a wide ¼ ai   
i q @xki j
wj qj qi qj qi @xsi
variety of benchmark problems solved. Nevertheless, if such a sin- !
gularity problem exists for a given particle which can easily be  1 X 1   @W ij
¼ aks
i pj  pi : ð35Þ
determined through monitoring whether the determinant of the
j
qj wj @xsi
aks
i is zero or not, the corrective SPH formulation on that particle
should not be imposed through setting aks ks It is observed that upon using the approximation given in Eq. (35),
i ¼ d , thereby leading
to the utilization of the standard SPH discretization scheme. numerical simulation of flows with density and viscosity ratios as
To be able to enhance the robustness and accuracy of the com- high as ql =qb ¼ 1000 and ll =lb ¼ 100 can be achieved.
putation, transport parameters are preferred to have a smoother With the correct velocity field for time-step ðn þ 1Þ, all fluid par-
ðnþ1Þ
transition between phases thereby avoiding sharp changes in ticles are moved to their new positions, i.e. r i ,
interface fluxes or gradients. Therefore, in this work, they are fur- ðnþ1Þ ðnÞ 1  ðnÞ ðnþ1Þ

ther smoothed through using a weighted harmonic mean interpo- ri ¼ ri þ ui þ ui Dt þ dri : ð36Þ
2
lation, namely,
Finally, neighbor and ghost particle lists are updated, and then the
21i 1j initial (reference) number density of the fluid is restored.
1j ¼ ; ð29Þ
1i þ 1j
2.5. Initial and boundary conditions
where 1 may denote q1 and l in Eqs. (25) and (27).
With the knowledge of intermediate particle positions and
The modeling process starts with generating particles for the
velocities, the intermediate number density and the divergence
flow domain and its boundaries. Initially, particles are created in
of intermediate velocity are calculated, which are used in the pres-
the form of a rectangular grid with equidistant particle spacing.
sure Poisson equation. The intermediate number density is calcu-
All physical boundaries are represented by a row of fixed particles
lated through the solution of the mass conservation in the
(hereafter referred to as boundary particles) whose pertinent fields
following form,
are evolved in accordance with the numerical solution. To distin-
ðnÞ ðnÞ  
guish among fluid and boundary particles, boundary and fluids
wi ¼ wi  Dtwi $  ui : ð30Þ
particles are assigned to different integer labels. Additionally,
In the corrector stage, the pressure at the time step ðn þ 1Þ is boundary particles of dissimilar boundaries are also differently
calculated using the following pressure Poisson equation subjected tagged, thereby enabling the implementation of various boundary
to the Neumann boundary condition: conditions when necessary. Fluid and boundary particles are given
  their physical parameters and initial conditions. Throughout this
1 $  u
$ $pðnþ1Þ ¼ : ð31Þ work, the multiple boundary tangent (MBT) method is used to
q  Dt
treat solid boundaries [41,27,19]. The particle spacing between
104 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113
Fig. 2. The sketch of the channel for which fully periodic condition is imposed in
the horizontal direction. Particles denoted by . are the imaginary copies of those
designated by I while particles represented by / are the imaginary copies of those
shown by J.
each boundary particle is the same as the initial particle spacing
between fluid particles. All particles are given the same smoothing
lengths as h ¼ 1:4r ij;o where r ij;o is the initial particle spacing. In
passing, it should be mentioned that throughout this work, a con-
stant smoothing length is used.
Through using a standard box-search algorithm, the neighbor
list is formed for each particle. Subsequently, ghost particles are
created for the incorporation of the MBT boundary treatment into
the numerical procedure [27]. It should be mentioned that ghost
particles are given the same mass, density, number density, and
transport parameters (i.e., viscosity) as their corresponding fluid
particles.  
n ¼ 0; ~
Either, no-slip, (ujC ¼ 0), or free-slip, (u  ~ t  ru þ ruT 
~
n ¼ 0, where for 2D vertical boundaries, it will reduces to:
@u
ux ¼ 0; @xy ¼ 0), boundary conditions for the velocity field are ap-
plied depending on the test case studied. Pressure field is subjected
to homogeneous Neumann boundary condition, ðq=DtÞðu 
uðnþ1Þ Þ  ~
n ¼ rp  ~
n, where ~
n is the unit normal vector. The detailed
derivation of the pressure boundary condition formulation can be
found in [27,19,40,42]. Upon replacing u by uðnþ1Þ [20], the pres-
sure boundary condition reduces to rp  ~ n ¼ 0.
Field values K (i.e. velocities, pressure and elastic stress tensor)
of a ghost particle are obtained depending on the type of the
boundary condition implemented. For the Dirichlet boundary con-
dition which specifies values for the field variables on the bound-
ary of the domain, the following linear interpolation is utilized;
namely, Kg ¼ 2Kb  Kf where Kg ; Kb and Kf are the fields variables
of the ghost, boundary, and fluid particles, respectively. To pre-
serve the shear continuity, the values of the elastic stress tensor
sp for ghost particles are also determined through the above for-
mulated linear interpolation [11]. As for the zero gradient bound-
ary condition (Neumann boundary condition) which specifies
values for the field variables as a derivative on the boundary, a
ghost particle is assigned to the same field values as the corre-
sponding fluid particle possesses Kg ¼ Kf .
The fully periodic boundary condition is imposed in a following
manner. In order to conserve the mass of the system, particles leav-
ing the channel off the right boundary are reinserted into the flow
domain from the left boundary at the same y-position. In addition,
the fluid particles around the left boundary are defined as neigh-
bors to those at the proximity of the right boundary and vice versa
as shown in Fig. 2.
3. Results
In this section, we have presented the modeling of several chal-
lenging two phase flow problems; namely, single vortex flow,
square droplet deformation under the effect of surface tension
force, droplet deformation in a non-Newtonian shear flow, and
Newtonian bubble rising in viscous and viscoelastic liquids sub-
jected to the combined effects of surface tension and buoyancy
forces. The outcomes of our numerical solutions are validated
against available numerical data in literature, and excellent agree-
ment is observed between ISPH and literature results.
3.1. Single vortex flow
As a first practical application of multiphase flow modeling, a
single vortex flow [43,44] is simulated through incorporating the
artificial particle displacement procedure into the solution algo-
rithm to be able to handle large topological deformations together
with color function for tracking the interface.
The initial geometry of the single vortex problem is shown in
Fig. 3. As can be seen, a deformable media of circular shape with
a radius 0.15 m is positioned inside a square domain having a side
length of 1 m. The x- and y-coordinates of the center point of the
circular media are 0.5 m and 0.75 m, respectively. The computa-
tional domain is represented by an array of 400  400 particles.
The particles of the circular media are distinguished from the sur-
rounding media through using color function which takes the va-
lue of zero for the circular media and one for the surrounding
media. At time t ¼ 0 s, all particles are subjected to the velocity
field given by,
 
2
uðr Þ ¼ 2 sin ðpxÞ sin ðpyÞ cos ðpyÞ ~ex
 
2
þ 2 sin ðpyÞ sin ðpxÞ cos ðpxÞ ~
ey : ð37Þ
Throughout the simulation, the interface location is tracked using
the smoothed color function as given in Eq. (14) whereby particles
having the color function value of 0.5 are considered to be interface
particles. It should be noted that this value is the arithmetic average
of the assigned colors to fluids A and B (see Section 2.4.1.)
Hieber and Koumoutsakos [43] have studied this problem using
the SPH method as well. As being deduced from their simulations,
the usage of standard SPH formulations causes particle clustering
and in turn leads to inaccurate simulation results in terms of sur-
face normal, curvature and interface locations. As a remedy, they
have used remeshing technique in their solutions, which was orig-
inally proposed in [45]. However, it is well known that such an ap-
proach introduces an additional computational cost into the
simulation. In Fig. 4 are given the particle distributions of single
vortex flow problem at time 3 s obtained with and without using
the artificial particle displacement procedure in the solution algo-
rithm. As stated previously, the standard SPH formulations cause
fluid particles to form clusters along the particle trajectories unless
1
0.8
0.6
y
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x
Fig. 3. Initial geometry and velocity field for the single vortex flow problem.
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 105

Fig. 4. Particle distribution with (a) and without (b) using the artificial particle displacement method at time t ¼ 3 s.

special measure is taken, which can be seen through the compari-
son of Fig. 4(a) and (b). The clustering in particle distribution re-
sults in large errors in the calculation of the surface normal and
particularly the curvature since the gradient operator in curvature
formulation is very sensitive to particle distributions. Here, it
should be noted that the artificial particle displacement method
does not alter the physics of the problem and brings a negligible
additional cost to the simulations in comparison to the remeshing
technique.
Upon using Eq. (37), the exact interface position of the single
vortex problem can be found at different times. The enlarged views
of the vortex tip and tail at time t ¼ 3 s are provided in Fig. 5 and
are compared to the exact position of the interface obtained using
Eq. (37). It can be seen that SPH can predict the location of the vor-
tex’s tip with a negligible error compared to the exact one. How-
ever, due to the scarcity of the particles at the tail region of the
vortex, there are some errors in the predicted shape of the tail,
which can be reduced by increasing the number of particles.
3.2. Square droplet deformation
In this section, we present ISPH solutions for the deformation of
an initially square droplet of fluid A inside the fluid B under the
enlarged view for the
tip of the vortex
(a)
enlarged view for the
tail of the vortex
influence of the surface tension force modeled by using the CSF
method to be able to demonstrate capability and the accuracy of
the proposed interface treatment, which includes the usage of dif-
ferent types of kernel functions for the CSF model and governing
flow equations, smoothing of transport parameters through
weighted arithmetic and harmonic interpolations and finally a
new discretization scheme for calculating the pressure gradient.
The square droplet has the side length of 1 m located at the center
of a square computational domain, i.e. ðxc ; yc Þ ¼ ð1; 1Þ m with the
side length of 2 m. The simulation parameters are provided in Ta-
ble 1. The density and the viscosity of both fluids are same and
equal to, qB ¼ qA ¼ 1 kg m3, and lB ¼ lA ¼ 1 kg m1 s1 except
for the case SB5 where the following parameters are used:
qB ¼ 100; qA ¼ 1 kg m3, and lB ¼ 10; lA ¼ 1 kg m1 s1. The sur-
face tension coefficient between two fluids is equal to 1 kg s2 for
all test cases. The no-slip boundary condition is applied on all
boundaries. Initially, particles are distributed on a rectangular lat-
tice. Each row and column consists of 70 equally spaced particles
except for the test case SB2 in which 150 particles are used in each
row and column.
Particle positions for case SB1 at times t ¼ 0 s and t ¼ 1 s are
shown in Fig. 6(a) and (b). Since the only active force inside the
simulation domain is the surface tension force (i.e., the gravita-
tional force is set to zero in this test case.), the square droplet is ex-
pected to gradually transform into a circular shape to minimize its
energy. It can be seen that the steady state terminal circular shape
has been reached at t ¼ 1 s as shown in Fig. 6(b). The radius of the
droplet at t ¼ 1 s is equal to 0.58 m. Ideally, when the steady state
is reached, the velocity field in the entire domain should be zero.
However, because of the numerical errors, the velocity field never
reaches the absolute zero, and therefore, particles keep oscillating
(b)
Table 1
Computational parameters for square droplet deformation (SPL2: cubic spline, SPL3:
quintic spline).

Case SB1 SB2 SB3 SB4 SB5

Density ratio qqA 1 1 1 1 0.01
B
l 1 1 1 1 0.1
Viscosity ratio lA
B

Kernel for governing equations SPL3 SPL3 SPL3 SPL2 SPL3

Fig. 5. The comparison of the interface location obtained using ISPH method with Kernel for surface tension force SPL2 SPL2 SPL3 SPL2 SPL2
the exact position obtained using Eq. (37) at time t ¼ 3 s. (a) Enlarged view of the Number of particle 4900 19,600 4900 4900 4900
region around the tip and (b) enlarged view of the region around the tail.
106 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113

(a) (b) (a) SB1 SB3 SB4 Analytical

2 2
0.05
1.5
1.8 0
0.75

p
1 1 1.75 −0.05
y

y
0 1.7

0.2 0.4 0.58 0.8 1

0 0
0 1 2 0 1 2
x x SB1 SB2 Analytical
(b)
(c) 1.5
0.05
2
1.8 0
0.75

p
1.75 −0.05

1 0 1.7
y

0.2 0.4 0.58 0.8 1

SB1 SB5 Analytical

0
0 1 2 (c)
x 0.05
1.5
Fig. 6. Square droplet deformation (a) particle distribution at t ¼ 0 s, (b) particle 1.8 0
distribution at t ¼ 1 s and (c) the unit normal vectors, ~
n of the interface particles at 0.75
p

t ¼ 1 s for the test case SB1. 1.75 −0.05

0 1.7

around their settled positions. This numerical error accumulates

over the time and leads to fractures in particle distribution across
the interface for t P 5 s. Fig. 6(c) shows the unit normal vectors, ~
n
for interface particles at the outermost layer of the droplet at
t ¼ 1 s. The calculated unit normals of the interface particles are
accurate in terms of their directions except those corresponding
to the corner particles of the initial square droplet. This error for
particles in question is considered being due to the initial droplet
and computational domain shapes. To test the possible origin of
the error for a few corner particles, we have solved the same prob-
lem with an initial diamond droplet, and have noted that the error
is eliminated since the corners of the diamond are not aligned with
the corners of the computational square domain and hence, corner
particles have more freedom to rotate, thereby enabling the calcu-
lation of much more accurate unit normal vectors.
The force balance at the interface between two static immisci-
ble fluids A and B with a constant surface tension coefficient can
be obtained from Eq. (6) simply as,
pB  pA ¼ rj;
Noting that the mean curvature is equal to,
1 1
j ¼ $  ~
n¼ þ ;
R1 R2
where R1 and R2 are the principal radii of curvature. For 2D test case
considered in this work, using Eq. (38), the steady state pressure
jump across the interface of the deformed circular droplet can be
written as
r by a rectangular grid composed of an array of 240  120 equally
pB  pA ¼ ; ð39Þ
R spaced particles.
where R is the radius of the circular droplet.
Fig. 7(a) shows the average pressure profiles for three test cases
(i.e., SB1, SB2 and SB3) as a function of the distance from the drop-
let center, ðxc ; yc Þ, which are compared to the analytical pressure
jump across the interface calculated using Eq. (39). It is observed
that results become more accurate when the quintic kernel func-
tion is used in the flow equations. It should also be noted that
0.2 0.4 0.58 0.8 1
r
Fig. 7. Square droplet deformation: pressure profile versus the distance from the
center point of the droplet, r, for test cases (a) SB1, SB3 and SB4, (b) SB1 and SB2,
and (c) SB1 and SB5 compared to the analytical pressure jump at the interface
obtained using Eq. (39). It should be noted that the presented profiles are the
smoothed pressure fields using weighted linear least squares and a 2nd degree
polynomial model to avoid undesired small oscillations.
the SB1 test case predicts the pressure value inside the droplet
slightly better than the SB3 does. The convergence analysis is
shown in Fig. 7(b) via test cases SB1 and SB2. It can be seen that
when the number of particles is increased, slightly better results
are obtained. The pressure profile for the system with
qA =qB ¼ 0:01 and lA =lB ¼ 0:1, corresponding to the test case
SB5, is shown in 7(c). The results are in fairly good agreement with
the analytical one; however it can be seen that when the density
and viscosity ratios are increased, the accuracy of the predicted re-
ð38Þ sults decreases slightly.
3.3. Droplet deformation in a non-Newtonian shear flow
In this part, we present simulation results for ISPH modeling of
the deformation of a Newtonian droplet in a viscoelastic Oldroyd-B
fluid under the shear. The geometry of the problem is presented in
Fig. 8. The Newtonian droplet with a radius of 0.125 m is located at
the center of a rectangular domain with the width of W ¼ 2 m and
the height of H ¼ 1 m. The computational domain is represented
The shear flow is generated in the channel by applying
U top ¼ 0:5 m s1 to the top boundary particles and U bottom ¼
0:5 m s1 to the bottom boundary particles which do not move
in space or time. The inlet and outlet of boundaries of the compu-
tational domain are treated as fully periodic boundaries. To be able
to compare the transient nature of this test case with that reported
in literature, at t ¼ 0 s, a linear velocity profile was applied to the
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 107

B3 in terms of the deformation parameter is different as expected.

Utop
We have solved two test cases for the deformation of a Newtonian
W droplet in a non-Newtonian shear flow with the same physical and
input simulation parameters as reported in [46,47]. The simulation
parameters are provided in Table 2.

B2
B1

D
H The deformation parameter can be defined as,
Rmax  Rmin
Ds ¼ ; ð40Þ
Rmax þ Rmin
y
U where Rmax and Rmin are the shortest and largest distance from the
bottom
x B4
droplet center.
Fig. 9(a) shows the deformation parameter versus time in com-
Fig. 8. The computational geometry for the deformation of a Newtonian droplet in
parison to the results presented in [46,47]. After approximately
a non-Newtonian shear flow.
t ¼ 3 s, the flow reaches the steady state solution. The calculated
deformation parameter for t ¼ 3 s is Ds  0:24. In [46], it is re-
Table 2 ported that droplet reaches the stationary state with Ds  0:265
The computational parameters for the deformation of a Newtonian droplet in a while in [47] the reported value is Ds  0:48. One can note from
viscoelastic base fluid under the shear. It should be noted that here and hereafter, SI Fig. 9(a) and (b) that the result of the current simulation is in excel-
units are employed for all modeling parameters. lent agreement with those reported in [46] in terms of both tran-
Case ql qb ll lb r k1 b ¼ kk21 c_ Re De Ca sient nature of deformation parameter Ds as well as the steady
state droplet shape at t ¼ 3.
NV1 19.2 19.2 1.0 1.0 0.52 0.4 0.5 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.24
NV2 19.2 19.2 1.0 1.0 0.208 0.4 0.5 1.0 0.3 0.4 0.6
Fig. 9(c) shows Ds as a function of time for the test case NV2. It
can be seen that as the capillary number, Ca goes up, the droplet
elongates more in the flow direction since the viscous force be-
comes more dominant over the surface tension or interfacial force.
flow domain as an initial condition. We have also simulated the Again, there is good agreement between the results of the current
same test case with the initial condition where all fluid particles work and those reported in [46]. In both cases, the flow reaches the
are given the zero initial velocity. It is noted that the result of steady state whereas in [47], it was reported that the flow does not
the simulation with the zero-initial velocity provides exactly the reach the steady state at all. For the test case NV2, the comparison
same steady state shape as the one with the linear initial velocity of the particle positions and the interface position (solid line) re-
profile. Nevertheless, the transient behavior of both simulations ported in [46] is also provided in Fig. 9(d).

(a) (b)
0.8 0.8
Chinyoka et al.
Pillapakkam & Singh
0.6
ISPH
D

0.4 0.5
y

0.2

0 0.2
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0.7 1 1.3
t x

(c) (d)
0.8 0.8

0.6
D

0.4 0.5
y

0.2

0 0.2
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0.7 1 1.3
t x

Fig. 9. The deformation of a Newtonian droplet in a non-Newtonian shear flow: (a) and (c) the deformation parameter versus time for the test cases NV1 and NV2,
respectively, which are compared to data reported in [46,47], (b) and (d) particle positions for the test cases NV1 and NV2 at t ¼ 3 s and t ¼ 10 s, correspondingly. It should be
noted that the interface shapes marked by the black lines in (b) and (d) correspond to the results presented in [46].
108 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113

Table 3
Physical simulation parameters and dimensionless numbers of the Newtonian bubble rising in viscous fluids.

Case ql qb ll lb g r ql =qb ll =lb Re Bo

NN1-c, NN1-f 1000 100 10 1 0.98 24.5 10 10 35 10

NN2 1000 1 7.84 1.00 0.98 19.6 1000 7.84 1000 200
NN3 1000 1 10 0.1 0.98 1.96 1000 100 35 125

3.4. Newtonian bubble rising in viscous liquids Table 4

Simulation parameters and conditions of the Newtonian bubble rising in viscous
In this section, the proposed multiphase ISPH method with the fluids.
improved interface treatment is further tested and validated Case H W B.C: B1,B2 B.C: B3,B4 No. of particles
extensively against the published results through numerically sim-
NN1-c 2m 1m Free slip No slip 75  150
ulating several test cases for the Newtonian bubble rising in vis- NN1-f 2m 1m Free slip No slip 150  300
cous fluids. Out of these test cases, for the sake of brevity, we NN2 6m 10 m No slip No slip 120  200
have presented only four of them to reveal the ability of the mul- NN3 2m 1m Free slip No slip 100  200
tiphase SPH for capturing the physics behind the various forms of
Newtonian bubble rising and deformation in viscous liquids. The
presented test cases have a varying range of the density and viscos-
NN1−c NN1−f FEM Hysing et al.
ity ratios, and Reynolds and Bond numbers; namely
10 6 ql =qb 6 1000; 7 6 ll =lb 6 100; 35 6 Re 6 1000 and
10 6 Bo 6 200 as given in Table 3. The computational geometry
of the test cases is shown in Fig. 10. The simulation parameters
and conditions used in these test cases are summarized in Table 4.
The no-slip boundary condition is imposed for the top and bottom
boundaries, B3 and B4 while the free slip boundary condition is
used for the left and right boundaries B1 and B2 except the test
case of NN2, which is subjected to the no slip boundary condition
on B1 and B2.
Fig. 11 shows terminal bubble shapes for test cases NN1-c and Fig. 11. The terminal shapes of the bubble for cases NN1-c and NN1-f which are
NN1-f. The computed terminal bubble shapes of these two test compared to the shape obtained by the FEM method in [48].
cases are compared with the terminal bubble shape obtained with
the finest grid (cell size: h ¼ 1=320) in [48]. It can be seen that as 75  150 ! 150  300), the steady state bubble shape calculated
the number of particles used in the simulation increases (i.e. by the multiphase ISPH method converges to the terminal shape
presented in [48].
The time snapshots of the bubble shape for the test case NN2
B3 are shown in Fig. 12 and compared to the level-set results of [49]
and WCSPH results of [28]. The obtained results are in good agree-
ment with both level-set and WCSPH ones.
W As mentioned in Section 2.4, the cubic spline kernel function is
used in the discretization of equations associated with the calcula-
tion of the surface tension force while the quintic spline kernel
function is used for the discretization of the governing equations
and the relevant boundary conditions. The bubble shapes as well
as the particle positions around the bubble interface and the mag-
g nitudes of the color function gradient, j$Cj of case NN1-c at time
t ¼ 3 which are computed using the cubic and quintic kernel func-
tions are shown in sub-Fig. 13a and b, respectively. It should be
noted that j$Cj is the approximation of the 1D Dirac delta function,
B2
B1

and represents the interface thickness. It is important to emphasize

H that the usage of the cubic spline function produces sharper j$Cj
compared to the quintic spline (the maximum value of j$Cj calcu-
lated is 18.98 for the cubic spline while it is 15.4 for the quintic
spline). In another word, using the cubic spline function produces
a thinner interface (refer to the right hand side of these figures
where color indicates the magnitude of the gradient of the color
D

function) thereby preventing the fluid particles from penetrating

into the bubble domain (as highlighted with dashed circles in
y Fig. 13a and b, and leads to the smoother interface prediction, as
D shown in Fig. 13c and d which shows the close-up view of the
W/2 interface, and consequently more accurate numerical results. Here,
in passing, we should state that for plotting purpose, the interfaces
B4 in Fig. 13c and d are determined through using the color function
x value of 0.5.
The time evolution of the bubble interface as well as the veloc-
Fig. 10. The geometry of bubble rising in viscous fluids. ity field inside the computational domain for the test case NN3 are
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 109

shown in Fig. 14. Initially, the buoyancy force generated by the
density difference between two fluids accelerates the bubble in
the opposite direction of the gravity, g, thereby inducing circula-
tion inside and around the bubble, which points into the bubble
at the trailing end and pointing out at the leading end. This velocity
field which has a larger magnitude in the core region of the domain
pushes the bubble upward. The liquid jet formed, in the wake of
the rising bubble, close to the trailing end deforms the shape of
the bubble interface through overcoming the decelerating surface
tension force and in turn modifying the decelerating surface ten-
sion force. The bubble will continue to deform until the accelerat-
ing and decelerating forces balance each other. It should be noted
that depending on the Reynolds, Re, and Bond, Bo, used in the test
cases, the bubble will retain the spherical shape or will break off
into two or more pieces. In this test case, the buoyancy force pre-
vails over the surface tension force, and hence, the bubble breaks
off as demonstrated in Fig. 14.
The center of mass and mean velocity of a bubble can be calcu-
lated as [48],
R R
rdA   udA
ðxc ; yc Þ ¼ RX ; ux ; uy ¼ RX ; ð41Þ
X dA X dA
where X is the region occupied by the bubble. Using Eq. 41, the ris-
ing velocity, uy and the vertical position, yc of the bubble are calcu-
lated to be 0.203 and 1.1, respectively, at time t ¼ 3 s for the test
case NN3, which are in good agreement with the values 0.206 and
1.12 reported in [48].
3.5. Newtonian bubble rising in viscoelastic liquids
For certain combinations of modeling and physical parameter,
the bubble rising in a viscoelastic fluid reveals an interesting flow
phenomenon such that in the wake of the rising bubble, the veloc-
ity field of fluid particles very close to the trailing end is in the
direction of the motion of the bubble whereas it reverses its direc-
tion at a small distance from the trailing end, which is commonly
referred to as a negative wake. It is worthy of realizing that this
behavior is rather different for a bubble rising in a Newtonian li-

∗ ∗ ∗
(a) t =2.8 (b) t =3.2 (c) t =3.6
2 L−S Sussman et al.
SPH Grenier et al.
1 SPH Present

−1

−2
(d) t∗=4.0 (e) t∗=4.4 (f) t∗=4.8
2

1
y/R

−1

−2
(g) t∗=5.2 ∗
(h) t =5.6
∗
(i) t =6.0
2

−1

−2
−2 −1 0 −2 −1 0 −2 −1 0
x/R

Fig. 12. The time evolution of the bubble interface plotted with dimensionless time interval of Dt  ¼ 0:4 and compared to the results presented in [49,28] (t  ¼ t ðg=RÞ0:5 is the
dimensionless time).
110 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113

quid in which the fluid velocity behind the bubble is always in the
same direction as the bubble’s motion. This phenomenon has at-
tracted the attention of fluid mechanics scientist and therefore,
has been studied both experimentally and numerically using
mesh-dependent methods (see [50] and references therein). How-
ever, to the our best knowledge, it has not been modeled using
meshless method. Toward this end, to be able to show that the
SPH method can also capture this interesting physics, we have also
modeled three bubble rising test cases in viscoelastic fluids for
which modeling parameters are summarized in Table 5. The geom-
etry of the computational domain is similar to the Newtonian bub-
ble rising in viscous fluids as sketched in Fig. 10.
To be able to simulate the problems in question, 120  240
number of particles are distributed regularly on a rectangular do-
main with the height and the width of H ¼ 4 m and W ¼ 2 m, cor-
respondingly. A circular bubble with an initial diameter of
D ¼ 0:6 m and its center at coordinates of ð1 m; 1 mÞ is located in-
side the computational domain. As can be seen from Table 5, all the
physical parameters are kept constant for the test cases except b. It
should be also noted that the test case NV3 is equivalent to the
bubble rising in a Newtonian base fluid with the viscosity of
l ¼ 10:25. The no-slip boundary condition is imposed on all
boundaries.
Fig. 15 shows the interface positions of the bubble and velocity
vectors inside the computational domain for the test cases NV3–5.
Upon decreasing the b from b ¼ 1 to b ¼ 0:5, one can clearly notice
that although both test cases have a similar velocity profile, the
bubble with b ¼ 0:5 moves up at a slightly higher velocity, which
can be concluded from the positions of the interface for which
close-up views are presented in Fig. 15(d) and (e). Further decrease
in the value of b, i.e. b ¼ 0:5 ! b ¼ 0:07 leads to the velocity field
at a distance slightly further away from the trailing end which is
in the opposite direction of the motion of the bubble, as illustrated
in Fig. 15(f) (an enlarged view for Fig. 15(c)). The second interest-
ing feature of a bubble rising in a viscoelastic fluid is that the bub-
ble develops a cusp-shaped, or cornered trailing end as shown in
15(c), which can be attributed to the fact that at small b values,
the extensional viscoelastic stresses in general being large in a thin
section at the trailing end of the bubble can surmount the surface
tension hence forming a cusped-like trailing end. The existence of a
cusp-like trailing end changes the velocity field in the wake of the
rising bubble, thus leading to the so-called negative wake. As sta-
ted before, the velocity in the wake of a bubble rising in a Newto-
nian liquid is in the same direction as the motion of the bubble
thereby causing an additional drag force opposed to the motion
of the bubble. On the other hand, the stresses and the drag on
the bubble in the viscoelastic fluid acts in way that the bubble with
a cusp-like trailing end rises at a noticeably higher velocity than
that without cusp-like trailing end (see Fig. 15(f)). The cusp-like
trailing end becomes more and more obvious as the time
progresses.
Streamlines inside the computational domain for the cases NV4
and NV5 are plotted in Fig. 16. Only one vortex ring is observed for
the case NV4 (similar to the bubble rising in a Newtonian back-
ground fluid). However, upon further decreasing the value of b,
which represents the ratio of Newtonian to polymeric contribu-
tions to total stress tensor, another vortex ring is observed to have
been formed in the wake of the bubble. The presence of this vortex

0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15

1.5 1.5
(a) (b)

1 1
y

0.5 0.5
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
x x

1.1 1.1
(c) (d)
1.05 1.05

1 1
y

0.95 0.95

0.9 0.9

0.85 0.85
0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9
x x

Fig. 13. The interface shapes for the case NN1-c obtained using (a) cubic and (b) quintic splines for the calculation of surface tension force. The left hand side of these sub
figures shows the particle distribution whereas the right hand side presents contour plots of the magnitude of the gradient of the color function, j$Cj as well as the interface
as a line. The color-bars correspond to j$Cj. Since j$Cj decays outside the interfacial region, the contours essentially show the thickness of the interfaces. The close-up views of
regions marked by dashed circles in sub-figures (a) and (b) are shown in sub-figures (c) and (d), respectively.
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113 111

1.4 1.4
(a) (b)

0.85 0.85
y

0.3 0.3
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1

1.4 1.4
(c) (d)

0.85 0.85
y

0.3 0.3
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1

1.4 1.4
(e) (f)

0.85 0.85
y

0.3 0.3
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
x x

Fig. 14. The time snapshots of the (left) particle positions (right) velocity vectors at times (a) t ¼ 0:5 s, (b) t ¼ 1:0 s, (c) t ¼ 1:5 s, (d) t ¼ 2:0 s, (e) t ¼ 2:5 s and (f) t ¼ 3:0 s.

Table 5 ative values just below the trailing end of the bubble while it has
Computational parameters of a Newtonian bubble rising in a viscoelastic base fluid. positive values for the test case NV4, thereby further pointing to
Case ql qb ll lb r k1 b ¼ kk21 g Re De Bo the existence of the negative wake. For the test case NV5, one
would observe that the cusp-like trailing end becomes more and
NV3 1 0.1 10.25 1.025 10.0 0.2 1 980 0.5 11.4 8.8
more obvious as the time progresses.
NV4 1 0.1 10.25 1.025 10.0 0.2 0.5 980 0.5 11.4 8.8
NV5 1 0.1 10.25 1.025 10.0 0.2 0.07 980 0.5 11.4 8.8
4. Concluding remarks

An ISPH method for modeling of Newtonian and non-Newto-

ring is owing to the negative wake present in the vicinity of the
interface around the trailing end of the bubble.
If the contour plots of velocity components in both x- and y-
directions for test cases NV4 and NV5 were to be plotted, one could
notice that the scalar values of the velocity components are larger
for the test case NV5 than that for NV4. It should be further noted
that for the test case NV5, the y-component of the velocity has neg-
nian multiphase problems is presented. In this direction, the im-
proved ISPH algorithm is incorporated with some important
interface treatment procedures. As practical benchmark problems
with the ability of testing the developing algorithms, we have con-
sidered and numerically solved various types of two phase flow
problems; namely, the deformation of a square droplet in a back-
ground fluid under the influence of surface tension force, single
112 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113

(a) (b) (c)

3 3 3

2 2 2
y

y
1 1 1

0 0 0
0 1 2 0 1 2 0 1 2
x x x

(d): enlarged view for (a) (e): enlarged view for (b) (f): enlarged view for (c)
1 1.1 1.3

0.85 0.95 1.15

0.7 0.8 1

0.55 0.65 0.85

0.7 1 1.3 0.7 1 1.3 0.7 1 1.3

Fig. 15. The velocity vectors as well as interface positions for (a) NV3, (b) NV4 and (c) NV5 at t ¼ 0:13 s. The enlarged views for the region around the trailing edge of the
bubble are also provided in sub figures (d–f). It should be noted that the test case NV3 is equivalent to the Newtonian bubble rising in a viscous liquid with l ¼ 10:25. It
should be further pointed out the average bubble rising velocity increases as the b decreases.

(a) (b)
3 3

2 2
y

1 1

0 0
0 1 2 0 1 2
x x

Fig. 16. Streamlines for the Newtonian bubble rising in a viscoelastic fluid for (a) case NV4, and (b) case NV5 at t ¼ 0:13 s. Note that for the case with a smaller value of b, the
negative wake that has been formed at the trailing end of the bubble causes the formation of the new vortex ring at the bottom section of the bubble.

vortex flow, droplet deformation in a viscoelastic Oldroyd-B shear
flow, bubble rising in viscous and viscoelastic fluids modeled
through the Oldroyd-B constitutive equation. The surface tension
force is included as a volumetric source term in the balance of lin-
ear momentum equation through making the use of so-called con-
tinuum surface force (CSF) model. To be able to enhance the
quality of the interface tracking, we have suggested the usage of
two different types of kernel functions; that is to say, a cubic spline
kernel is used for the discretization of equations associated with
the calculation of the surface tension force whereas a quintic spline
kernel is employed for the rest of the equations. It is observed that
the usage of the cubic spline function produces sharper color gra-
dient compared to the quintic spline thereby producing a thinner
interface and in turn preventing the fluid particles from penetrat-
ing into the bubble domain and leading to a smoother interface
prediction and consequently more accurate numerical results in
comparison to those obtained by the quintic spline function. Here,
it is valuable to state that even though not tested, other spline
functions with narrower support domains are likely to lead to
the same observation. Hence, it is concluded the sharper the color
gradient at the interface, the better the interface features are. To
handle large variations in the transport parameters of constituents
 A. Zainali et al. / Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. 254 (2013) 99–113
across the interface, which is known to be the main cause of signif-
icant numerical instabilities in the modeling of multiphase flow
problems, we have suggested the combined usage of weighted
arithmetic and harmonic interpolations for smoothing transport
parameters of the constituents. Lastly, a new pressure discretiza-
tion scheme has been suggested and implemented in our ISPH
algorithm. It is shown that with usage of the interface treatment
suggested including the above listed remedies, it becomes possible
to model multiphase flow problems with large density and viscos-
ity ratios as high as up to 1000 and 100, respectively, in a robust
and accurate manner. It is noted that test cases are compared
extensively against available data in literature, and excellent
agreements among the results are observed.
Acknowledgments
Funding provided by the Scientific and Technological Research
Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) for the project 110M547 and the
European Commission Research Directorate General under Marie
Curie International Reintegration Grant program with the grant
agreement number of PIRG03-GA-2008-231048 is gratefully
acknowledged. The third author also acknowledges the Yousef Ja-
meel scholarship.
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