An original algorithm for VOF based method to handle wetting effect in multiphase flow simulation

•A simple smoothing method based on a Helmholtz equation for the VOF-CSF.•The correlation between the distribution of VOF and the contact angle on the wall.•We validate the method with experimental results.

The numerical modeling of contact angle and wetting surface properties is investigated with volume of fluid (VOF) interface tracking method. A method is proposed to model the wetting properties with an existing continuum surface force (CSF) approach by introducing an original smooth volume of fluid function (SVOF) resulting from the solving of a penalized Helmholtz equation. For the diffusion equation proposed here, the interest of the penalty method is to account implicitly for wetting effects and, to avoid introducing sliding laws for the velocities at the wall or modifying by hand the interface shape on the solid boundaries. The SVOF model is validated and evaluated on published experiments concerning droplet impacts on flat and inclined surfaces with various wetting properties.