A Mesh Convergence Study on 2-D Air Bubble Barrier Simulation with Mean of Inlet Static Pressure and Horizontal Surface Velocity

Abstract

Timing is vital for oil spill response operations. However, deployment of the traditional response equipment, unfortunately, takes much more time. Therefore, innovative solutions are needed to minimize time losses. One of these innovative solutions is the air bubble barrier. Air bubble barrier creates a barrier to anything floating in the water, especially keeping the floating oil and petroleum in the area where it is spilled. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation has grown in importance as a resource for air bubble barrier studies in recent years. Despite the extraordinary success of Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stoke applications on air bubble barriers, just a few studies concentrate on mesh sensitivity, one of the most fundamental issues with CFD methods. The main purpose of this study is to perform a mesh convergence study by simulating an air bubble barrier in the Simcenter STAR CCM+ software. In this context, in this simulation, a 2D numerical model is considered. The mesh convergence study has been performed by calculating the aperture inlet mean static pressure and the mean horizontal surface velocity. As a result, it is evident that the mesh base size and number of elements in mesh in case 10 can be employed to maintain the solution time-optimal state in the upcoming numerical simulations on the 2D and 3D air bubble barrier. Case 10 represents the mesh base size of 0.015 and the number of elements in mesh of 99042. Findings from this parametric study will be incorporated as mesh control rules into the subsequent 2D and 3D simulations of the air bubble barrier.