The Transient Modeling of Bubble Pinch-Off Using an ALE Moving Mesh

C.J. Forster, and M.K. Smith
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Published in 2010

The use of an acoustic field to control the boiling process has the potential to increase the overall rate of heat transfer and delay the critical transition to film boiling. This system is being investigated through the development of a model of a single boiling bubble near a flat, heated, horizontal surface in the presence of an acoustic field. The dynamics of the bubble interface is modelled using the Arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian (ALE) Moving Mesh method, which offers a sharp interface to apply conditions for surface tension and the modeling of other physics, such as acoustic fields and heat transfer. In this paper, pinch-off is investigated using a simpler model of the transient motion of a single, isothermal bubble attached to the bottom surface of a water tank that rises under the effect of buoyancy, detaches from the surface, and then continues to rise. The change in topology, pinch-off, is handled in a MATLAB script before returning to COMSOL to complete the simulation.