A consistent coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid solver for two-phase flow in OpenFOAM

Abstract

Coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid methods combine the mass conservation of a transported volume fraction with the smooth interface description of a signed-distance function. In the simple coupled variant, the level set is rebuilt from the volume fraction during every time step rather than transported, and it supplies the interface curvature and the fluid properties. This paper presents an implementation of the simple coupled method in OpenFOAM and sets out four conditions that such an implementation must satisfy to stay consistent. The density in the time derivative and in the convective mass flux of the momentum equation must be the same field, the curvature in the surface tension force must come from the level set, the blended kinematic viscosity must reproduce the blended dynamic viscosity, and the smoothed fields must be evaluated on boundary and processor patches as well as in the cells. The solver is tested on the second two-dimensional rising-bubble case of Hysing et al. on two meshes. Up to t= 1.75 s, while the three reference codes of that benchmark agree, the rise velocity differs from the reference by at most 0.0064 and 0.0073 m/s on the two meshes, and its first maximum is 1.3% and 2.0% below the reference. These differences grow slightly with refinement. The same happens when the curvature and the properties are taken from the volume fraction, which reproduces the standard OpenFOAM solver, so their cause lies outside the coupling. Over the same interval the level-set coupling stays closer to the reference than this volume-fraction coupling, with a largest velocity difference of 0.0073 against 0.0094 m/s on the finer mesh. The bubble volume is conserved to the printed precision, and a run on four processors matches the serial run. The solver is released under the GNU General Public License.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{taran2026consistent,
  title = {{A consistent coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid solver for two-phase flow in OpenFOAM}},
  author = {Amirhossein Taran},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.24225},
  eprint = {2610.24225},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.24225},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - A consistent coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid solver for two-phase flow in OpenFOAM
AU  - Amirhossein Taran
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/16
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.24225
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.24225
AB  - Coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid methods combine the mass conservation of a transported volume fraction with the smooth interface description of a signed-distance function. In the simple coupled variant, the level set is rebuilt from the volume fraction during every time step rather than transported, and it supplies the interface curvature and the fluid properties. This paper presents an implementation of the simple coupled method in OpenFOAM and sets out four conditions that such an implementation must satisfy to stay consistent. The density in the time derivative and in the convective mass flux of the momentum equation must be the same field, the curvature in the surface tension force must come from the level set, the blended kinematic viscosity must reproduce the blended dynamic viscosity, and the smoothed fields must be evaluated on boundary and processor patches as well as in the cells. The solver is tested on the second two-dimensional rising-bubble case of Hysing et al. on two meshes. Up to t= 1.75 s, while the three reference codes of that benchmark agree, the rise velocity differs from the reference by at most 0.0064 and 0.0073 m/s on the two meshes, and its first maximum is 1.3% and 2.0% below the reference. These differences grow slightly with refinement. The same happens when the curvature and the properties are taken from the volume fraction, which reproduces the standard OpenFOAM solver, so their cause lies outside the coupling. Over the same interval the level-set coupling stays closer to the reference than this volume-fraction coupling, with a largest velocity difference of 0.0073 against 0.0094 m/s on the finer mesh. The bubble volume is conserved to the printed precision, and a run on four processors matches the serial run. The solver is released under the GNU General Public License.
ER  -

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