A three-dimensional solver for multiphase flow with soluble surfactant beyond the critical micelle concentration*

Surfactant-laden multiphase flows are of paramount importance to industrial applications in energy, manufacturing, and healthcare. Despite the attention that such flows have received, there is a dearth of computational studies that focus on systems with surfactant loading above the critical micelle concentration (CMC), beyond which surfactant monomers aggregate to form micelles, highly relevant to industrial applications. Beyond the CMC, predictive models of the system must account for flow and interfacial dynamics (including surface-tension-gradient-driven Marangoni stresses), surfactant transport in the form of monomers and aggregates in the bulk and on the interface, in addition to sorptive fluxes, and micelles mass-action kinetics. In this talk, we will present a new numerical framework able to handle surfactant-laden flows with concentrations above the CMC using our high-fidelity hybrid front-tracking and level-set approach.