Discussion Forum

Hi there!

My background is the modeling of resin flow in fabrication processes for fiber reinforced plastics (composites). This can be viewed as fluid flow through porous media.
Basic simulations are very simple, since the basic flow behavior follows Darcy's law, which is already implemented in COMSOL in the Subsurface Flow Module. Also, unsaturated flow (e.g. flow front propagation during a resin injection process) can be simulated using the Richards' equation module.

However, research in this area has made use of many different numerical methods, each tailored for specific needs.
One of those is the Control Volume Finite Element Method (CVFEM). The control volumes are generated inside the regular mesh, where each volume contains only one node of the mesh. Pressure (as dependent variable) is calculated on the nodes and therefore each control volume has an assigned pressure value. Flow is then characterized from volume to volume, since there is a discrete pressure gradient at each volume boundary.
This method facilitates e.g. flow front tracking, since the time step is simply adjusted, so that only one more volume is filled for this time step.

I was wondering if this method can somehow be applied in COMSOL or if there is already a module for it which I haven't found yet. So far, I only found the level set and the phase field methods implemented to track multiple phase interfaces.