Comparison of Sharp Interface and Smoothed Profile Methods for Laminar Flow Analysis Over Stationary and Moving Boundaries

This study is a comparison of two techniques for simulation of particulate flows on fixed Cartesian grids: Sharp interface Method (SIM) (Udaykumar et al., 2001, 2002, 2003) and a modified version of Immersed Boundary Method (Peskin, 1977) (IBM) known as Smoothed Profile Method (SPM) (Nakayama and Yamamoto, 2005; Luo et. al, 2009). Different cases were studied includes flow over one or two moving and stationary particles. Predictions of the drag coefficient shows that SPM and SIM are very close to the experiments. SIM slightly under-predicts the value of the drag coefficient while SPM has a small over-estimation. Moreover, SPM is more accurate on coarse grids. However, with refinement of the grid SIM approaches the exact values very fast leading to better results on fine grids. Flow pattern and vortex structures of SPM and SIM are almost the same. Both methods are capable of analyzing the wake flow. Unlike SIM, SPM is able to simulate the flow when two particles are in contact. When two particles are in motion and are very close in a way that the two interfaces overlap, SPM shows a repulsion force between two spheres which reduces the accuracy in comparison with SIM. However, SPM can achieve the collision of two particles without problem.