Simulations of Planar Turbulent Jet Impacting Liquid Coatings

In this work, we present a detailed example of numerical study of a planar jet impact onto the liquid film in context of metal coating. Liquid metal is drawn from a reservoir onto a retracting sheet, forming a coat. Planar air jets are then used to control the coat thickness. Real industrial configurations reach Reynolds numbers from tens of thousands to millions (depending on reference scale), the flow is also characterized by significant density ratios (air/liquid metal). The simulations presented in this work have been performed using Basilisk, a grid-adapting, strongly optimized code created by S. Popinet. Restricted variant of local adaptive mesh adaptation allows Basilisk to obtain arbitrary precision in relevant regions such as impact zone , while coarse grid is applied elsewhere to either save computational power or dampen turbulence far from regions of interest. Momentum-conserving code variants are used ensuring code stability. With this, we are able to present both two- and three-dimensional instantaneous results including interface geometry or film thickness even for realistic, industrial configurations.