Development of a low-dissipation diffuse interface method for compressible multiphase flow

Our goal is to construct a diffuse interface method suitable for shock dominated two-phase flows in the hypersonic regime - our primary interest is the study of high-speed droplet deformation and breakup. We use a 5-equation model of the Euler equations as the basis for simulating two-phase flow. Spatial fluxes are handled through the use of a low dissipation flux-vector splitting algorithm with a combination of MUSCL and a tangent of hyperbola for interface capturing (THINC) reconstruction for the material interface. The method is implemented into the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) framework provided by AMReX [1]. The method is validated against canonical test problems: a material advection problem for the interface sharpening scheme and a two-phase Sod shock tube problem for the capability to handle shockwaves and material interfaces simultaneously. Test cases of a Mach 2.4 shock/water column interaction demonstrate the improvements of the low dissipation scheme and that the method accurately replicates the phenomena found in experimental tests. The method is used to simulate a 3D Mach 1.47 shock/droplet interaction and the simulation results are compared to experimental data.