Smoothed dissipative particle dynamics model for mesoscopic multiphase flows in the presence of thermal fluctuations.

Abstract

Thermal fluctuations cause perturbations of fluid-fluid interfaces and highly nonlinear hydrodynamics in multiphase flows. In this work, we develop a multiphase smoothed dissipative particle dynamics (SDPD) model. This model accounts for both bulk hydrodynamics and interfacial fluctuations. Interfacial surface tension is modeled by imposing a pairwise force between SDPD particles. We show that the relationship between the model parameters and surface tension, previously derived under the assumption of zero thermal fluctuation, is accurate for fluid systems at low temperature but overestimates the surface tension for intermediate and large thermal fluctuations. To analyze the effect of thermal fluctuations on surface tension, we construct a coarse-grained Euler lattice model based on the mean field theory and derive a semianalytical formula to directly relate the surface tension to model parameters for a wide range of temperatures and model resolutions. We demonstrate that the present method correctly models dynamic processes, such as bubble coalescence and capillary spectra across the interface.