74th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 21, 2021 — November 23, 2021)

V0019: A Numerical Experiment on Wave Breaking with Oil Slick

Authors

• Han Liu, Department of Mechanical Engineering & St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota
• Qiang Gao, Department of Mechanical Engineering & St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota
• Lian Shen, Department of Mechanical Engineering & St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2021.GFM.V0019

With the global economy continually growing, the oil industry is rapidly expanding to meet the world’s growing energy demand. Oil production and oil transportation activities are increasing, and so are environmental concerns. Oil released in the oceans leads to the complex fluid mechanics problem of oil-wind-wave interaction. This interaction disperses the oil into droplets, and they are transported to an extensive area. When waves pile up, they overturn and break, generating complex structures spreading throughout the flow, leading to sea spray ejection, bubble breakup, oil droplet breakup, and turbulent mixing. Using numerical simulations, we aim to get detailed information on the oil-wind-wave interaction dynamics. We perform high-fidelity numerical simulations to investigate the bubbles, water droplets, and oil droplets generated by the impingement of breaking waves on an oil slick. The flow field in the air-oil-water system is obtained by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Using a coupled level set and volume of fluid (CLSVOF) method, the three-phase interfaces (air-water, air-oil, and water-oil) are directly captured. We study the generation and transport processes of bubbles, water droplets and oil droplets  by examining their instantaneous distribution in connection with the breaking wave dynamics.