Numerical simulation two phase flows of casting filling process using SOLA particle level set method

Mould filling process is a typical gas-liquid metal two phase flow phenomenon. Numerical simulation of the two phase flows of mould filling process can be used to properly predicate the back pressure effect, the gas entrapment defects, and better understand the complex motions of the gas phase and the liquid phase. In this paper, a novel sharp interface incompressible two phase numerical model for mould filling process is presented. A simple ghost fluid method like discretization method and a density evaluation method at face centers of finite difference staggered grid are proposed to overcome the difficulties when solving two phase Navier-Stokes equations with large-density ratio and large-viscosity ratio. A new mass conservation particle level set method is developed to capture the gas-liquid metal phase interface. The classical pressure-correction based SOLA algorithm is modified to solve the two phase Navier-Stokes equations. Two numerical tests including the Zalesak disk problem and the broken dam problem are used to demonstrate the accuracy of the present method. The numerical method is then adopted to simulate three mould filling examples including two high speed CCD camera imaging water filling experiments and an in situ X-ray imaging experiment of pure aluminum filling. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experiments. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.