A coupled volume-of-fluid/level-set method for simulation of two-phase flows on unstructured meshes

•A VOF/LS method is introduced for simulation of two-phase flows on unstructured meshes.•A VOF-PLIC method is used for interface advection.•Surface tension force is calculated using a the level-set function.•Numerical results are in excellent agreement with experiments from literature.

This paper presents a methodology for simulation of two-phase flows with surface tension in the framework of unstructured meshes, which combines volume-of-fluid with level-set methods. While the volume-of-fluid transport relies on a robust and accurate polyhedral library for interface advection, surface tension force is calculated by using a level-set function reconstructed by means of a geometrical procedure. Moreover the solution of the fluid flow equations is performed through the fractional step method, using a finite-volume discretization on a collocated grid arrangement. The numerical method is validated against two- and three-dimensional test cases well established in the literature. Conservation properties of this method are shown to be excellent, while geometrical accuracy remains satisfactory even for the most complex flows.