Two-phase electro-magneto-fluid dynamics model and its computational fluid dynamics implementation

Abstract

In this work, we present a two-phase electro-magneto-fluid dynamics (EMFD) model that merges electromagnetics and fluid dynamics. The model is suitable for use in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and was incorporated into OpenFOAM® after deriving appropriate equations that bypassed certain limitations of the software. Currently, there is lack of even single-phase EMFD models that can be incorporated into CFD software; however, simpler models from electrohydrodynamics (EHD) and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) are being implemented although they have certain approximations that can limit their applicability. We conclude that the derived EMFD model is applicable, and show its quality by implementing it and analyzing the results. We use cases with a droplet and the electrospinning process for verification. The drop deformations obtained were closer to analytical predictions than in the literature for two EHD models, but some oscillations were observed. We compared one simulation to the prediction of an analytical equation from MHD, and good agreement was shown. Finally, we simulate the electrospinning process, and the results were very close to the analytical predictions. We conclude that the implementation can be used for both EHD and MHD cases.