A Unified Viscoelastic Solver for Multiphase Fluid Simulation Based on a Mixture Model
Fluid simulation is a central topic in computer graphics, encompassing a wide range of methodologies for modeling Newtonian, non-Newtonian, and viscoelastic behaviors across both single-phase and multiphase settings. Existing single-phase frameworks have achieved high visual fidelity, yet multiphase simulations remain limited in accurately capturing complex phase interactions, particularly under high-viscosity-ratio or viscoelastic conditions. To address these challenges, we develop a unified multiphase viscoelastic formulation capable of handling diverse fluid types-including Newtonian, shear-dependent non-Newtonian, and viscoelastic flows-within a single consistent framework. The formulation extends mixture-model approaches through a multi-mode conformation tensor representation, which enhances numerical stability via phase-level stress corrections and efficiently captures a broad spectrum of rheological behaviors. Compared with existing techniques, our framework achieves improved momentum-mass consistency and numerical stability, maintaining physically plausible results across wide viscosity ranges, advancing the state of the art in multiphase viscoelastic fluid simulation.
Authors
- YaLan Zhang
- Steffen Frey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5134-9961)
- Xiaojuan Ban
- Z.R. Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7785-6597)
- Long Shen
- Junjun Pan
- Alex Telea
- Jiří Kosin
Institutions
- University of Groningen (NL)
- University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (NL)
- Utrecht University (NL)
- Beihang University (CN)
- University of Science and Technology Beijing (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
- Published
- 2026-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/tvcg.2026.3677118
- Primary Topic
- Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00