Numerical Methods for a Multicomponent Two-Phase Interface Model with Geometric Mean Influence Parameters

Abstract

In this paper, we consider an interface model for multicomponent two-phase fluids with geometric mean influence parameters, which is popularly used to model and predict surface tension in practical applications. For this model, there are two major challenges in theoretical analysis and numerical simulation: the first one is that the influence parameter matrix is not positive definite; the second one is the complicated structure of the energy function, which requires us to find out a physically consistent treatment. To overcome these two challenging problems, we reduce the formulation of the energy function by employing a linear transformation and a weighted molar density, and furthermore, we propose a local minimum grand potential energy condition to establish the relation between the weighted molar density and mixture compositions. From this, we prove the existence of the solution under proper conditions and prove the maximum principle of the weighted molar density. For numerical simulation, we propose a modified Newton's method for solving this nonlinear model and analyze its properties; we also analyze a finite element method with a physical-based adaptive mesh-refinement technique. Numerical examples are tested to verify the theoretical results and the efficiency of the proposed methods.