Executive Summary : | This project aims to develop a meshless and mass-conserving thin-flow solver with a phase-change model, which is motivated by applications that benefit from computational efficiency due to the use of height-averaged quantities in a thin film. Thin-film models are used in various applications such as paint flow, lubricants, rain-water films on vehicles, and thin-film freezing in the pharmaceutical industry. The proposed model addresses two levels of complexity: heat transfer and mass conservation, which are difficult to implement in a mesh-based method, and the bed topology changes with time due to the phase-change process. Meshfree methods like SPH have been shown to be effective for phase-change applications. The discrete droplet method (DDM) is a meshfree method that limits computations only to localized high aspect ratio regions in the domain. This method eliminates the need for mesh connectivity for points representing the dynamic phase. The liquid film is represented by discrete droplets, each associated with a Gaussian function, and the height of the film at a location is the summation of Gaussian functions in the neighborhood. The motion of a droplet is governed by the Cauchy momentum equation, conserving the mass of the fluid. The model will be applied to applications such as glacial ice-flow, icing on aircraft wings, and medicinal thin-film freezing in pharmaceutical applications. The motion of the phase-change boundary is translated to the change of the solid phase's height and the diameter of the liquid droplets. |