Simulation of Bubbles and Liquid Films

Abstract

Liquid and gas interactions often contain bubbles surrounded by thin liquid films. Simulation of these liquid films is challenging since they quickly become thinner than the grid resolution, which leads to premature bursting or merging of the bubbles. We prevent this thinning process by applying a disjoining force to the film, obtaining bubbles that last much longer without bursting or merging. The surface tension on the liquid film is the next diffuculty. Since the level set is not differentiable at the center of the thin liquid film, the curvature computed from the level set gradient is noisy, and the thin liquid film ruptures quickly. To prevent this, we compute the surface tension from the local isosurface, obtaining long-lasting liquid films. However, since bubbles stay longer without bursting or merging, the volume loss of each bubble is noticeable. To solve this problem, we modify the pressure projection to produce a velocity field whose divergence is controlled by the proportional and integral feedback. This allows us to preserve the volume or, if desired, to inflate or deflate the bubbles. In addition to premature bursting and volume change, another difficulty is the complicated liquid surface, which increases memory and computational costs. To reduce storage requirement, we collocate the velocity and pressure to simplify the octree mesh. To reduce the computational complexity of the pressure projection, we use a multigrid method.