3D Solver for Viscous Fluids to Simulate Lava Flows

Abstract

In this work, we present a new OpenFOAM solver, called interThermalRadConvFoam, to simulate free-surface viscous fluids with temperature changes due to radiative, convective, and conductive heat exchanges. The solver is based on interFoam (available in OpenFOAM) and thus on the Volume of Fluid technique used to describe the multiphase dynamics of two incompressible, viscous, and immiscible fluids (based on the Interface Capturing strategy). In our model, the two fluids are the fluid of interest with high viscosity and the surrounding atmosphere. Being interested in temperature effects, we added to the mass and momentum equations from interFoam an equation for energy that models the thermal exchanges between the fluid and the environment. Furthermore, a temperature-dependent viscoplastic model is used for the final application to lava flows. Here we present some results of numerical tests performed with interThermalRadConvFoam for a benchmark from literature based on a laboratory experiment and an application to a real lava flow by simulating the Pico do Fogo 2014–2015 Eruption. For the simulation of the laboratory experiment, we also present simulations executed using a dynamic mesh with adaptive refinement.