Numerical simulation of complete liquid vapour phase change process inside porous media using smoothing of diffusion coefficient

The present paper deals with numerical simulations of complete phase change process inside porous media, based on the two-phase mixture model, using finite volume method for discretisation. The investigation proposes a successful remedy in order to eliminate the occurrence of "jump" in predicted properties, by introducing an efficient smoothing algorithm for the effective diffusion coefficient. A thorough parametric study also indicates that the adoption of proposed remedy does not alter the true or expected solution. All tested cases, covering applicable ranges of parametric variations, could be physically interpreted. The methodology is, therefore, recommended for future simulations of complete phase change processes within porous media. (C) 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.