A low Mach number IMEX flux splitting for the level set ghost fluid method

Abstract

Considering droplet phenomena at low Mach numbers, large differences in the magnitude of the occurring characteristic waves are presented. As acoustic phenomena often play a minor role in such applications, classical explicit schemes which resolve these waves suffer from a very restrictive timestep restriction. In this work, a novel scheme based on a specific level set ghost fluid method and an implicit-explicit (IMEX) flux splitting is proposed to overcome this timestep restriction. A fully implicit narrow band around the sharp phase interface is combined with a splitting of the convective and acoustic phenomena away from the interface. In this part of the domain, the IMEX Runge-Kutta time discretization and the high order discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method are applied to achieve high accuracies in the bulk phases. It is shown that for low Mach numbers a significant gain in computational time can be achieved compared to a fully explicit method. Applications to typical droplet dynamic phenomena validate the proposed method and illustrate its capabilities.