Numerical time-step restrictions as a result of capillary waves

Abstract

The propagation of capillary waves on material interfaces between two fluids imposes a strict constraint on the numerical time-step applied to solve the equations governing this problem and is directly associated with the stability of interfacial flow simulations. The explicit implementation of surface tension is the generally accepted reason for the restrictions on the temporal resolution caused by capillary waves. In this article, a fully-coupled numerical framework with an implicit treatment of surface tension is proposed and applied, demonstrating that the capillary time-step constraint is in fact a constraint imposed by the temporal sampling of capillary waves, irrespective of the type of implementation. The presented results show that the capillary time-step constraint can be exceeded by several orders of magnitude, with the explicit as well as the implicit treatment of surface tension, if capillary waves are absent. Furthermore, a revised capillary time-step constraint is derived by studying the temporal resolution of capillary waves based on numerical stability and signal processing theory, including the Doppler shift caused by an underlying fluid motion. The revised capillary time-step constraint assures a robust, aliasing-free result, as demonstrated by representative numerical experiments, and is in the static case less restrictive than previously proposed time-step limits associated with capillary waves.