Novel method simulates tens of thousands of bubbles in foamy flows
Date:
February 2, 2022
Source:
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Summary:
Bubbles aren't just for bath time. Bubbles, specifically bubbles in
foamy flows, are critical for many industrial processes, including
the production of food and cosmetics and drug development and
delivery. But the behavior of these foamy flows is notoriously
difficult to compute because of the sheer number of bubbles
involved. Previous attempts to simulate foamy flows have relied
on the time-consuming and computationally expensive process of
tracking the bubbles by color- coating each individual bubble in
the foam. This limited simulations to just a few dozen bubbles,
instead of the thousands to millions in real foams. Now, researchers
have developed a new way to simulate tens of thousands of bubbles
in foamy flows, breaking the computational complexity of this
long-standing process.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== Bubbles aren't just for bath time. Bubbles, specifically bubbles in
foamy flows, are critical for many industrial processes, including the production of food and cosmetics and drug development and delivery. But
the behavior of these foamy flows is notoriously difficult to compute
because of the sheer number of bubbles involved.
========================================================================== Previous attempts to simulate foamy flows have relied on the
time-consuming and computationally expensive process of tracking the
bubbles by color-coating each individual bubble in the foam. This limited simulations to just a few dozen bubbles, instead of the thousands to
millions in real foams.
Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new way to simulate tens
of thousands of bubbles in foamy flows, breaking the computational
complexity of this long- standing process.
The research is published in Science Advances.
"This new method allows us for the first time to study foams with
many bubbles, opening the door for simulating a wide variety of flows
from the micro to the macroscale, including wet foams, turbulent flows
with bubbles, suspensions and emulsions in microfluidics," said Petros Koumoutsakos, the Herbert S. Winokur, Jr. Professor of Engineering and
Applied Sciences at SEAS and senior author of the study.
Instead of color-coating each individual bubble, the researchers broke
the foam down into a grid, with each cell of the grid containing at most
a part of four bubbles. Each bubble inside the cell is color-coated,
either yellow, green, blue or red.
"If I have four partial bubbles inside a cell, then the remaining piece
of the bubbles have to be in the neighboring cells," said Petr Karnakov,
a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. "We developed
an algorithm that can go into other cells and find the remaining pieces
of the bubble, matching green to green, blue to blue, etc. So, instead
of needing millions of colors, you just need four." This capability
allows for predictive simulations in scales ranging from microfluidics
to crashing waves. "Our new approach allows for large-scale predictive simulations of flows with multiple interfaces," said Sergey Litvinov,
a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich.
The difference between all previous approaches and the new approach
developed by Koumoutsakos, Karnakov and Litvinov can be compared to the difference between a painting and a puzzle. A painting is painstakingly
created stroke by stroke, while a puzzle relies on geometry and matching colors.
Next, the researchers aim to collaborate with experimentalists and
industrial partners to see how the method can be applied in the medical
field and the food industry as well as for membrane-less electrolysis
for energy applications.
The research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under
grant CRSII5_17386.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School_of_Engineering_and_Applied
Sciences. Original written by Leah Burrows. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Petr Karnakov, Sergey Litvinov, Petros Koumoutsakos. Computing
foaming
flows across scales: From breaking waves to microfluidics. Science
Advances, 2022; 8 (5) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm0590 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220202143045.htm
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