Volume of fluid based modeling of thermocapillary flow applied to a free surface lattice Boltzmann method

Thermocapillary flow, also termed as thermal Marangoni convection, is an important material transport mechanism in many technical processes. Thus, it has to be considered in the corresponding simulations. In this work, a novel numerical model for the implementation of thermocapillary flow into a volume of fluid based free surface lattice Boltzmann method is presented. It is based on the idea of discretizing the surface normal vector in accordance to the discretization scheme of the velocity space. This approach is used to interpolate the temperature at the surface and to calculate the local surface gradients. The result is a simple and efficient numerical model, which is able to calculate the Marangoni stress along a liquid surface with sufficient accuracy and without the need to explicitly reconstruct the interface. We show that the Marangoni stress can readily be incorporated into a free surface lattice Boltzmann model by adjusting the boundary condition at the surface. In doing so, no additional forcing scheme has to be applied. In order to verify the presented model, it is tested using several simulation setups. As the lattice Boltzmann method is particularly suitable for complex geometries, a special attention is paid to the behavior at curved surfaces. Additionally, a simple test case for thermocapillary flow that can be regarded as a modified version of the Couette flow problem, is presented.