Modeling phase transition and metastable phases

Abstract: We propose a model that describes phase transition including metastable phases present in the van der Waals Equation of State (EoS). We introduce a dynamical system that is able to depict the mass transfer between two phases, for which equilibrium states are both metastable and stable states, including mixtures. The dynamical system is then used as a relaxation source term in a isothermal two-phase model. We use a Finite volume scheme (FV) that treats the convective part and the source term in a fractional step way. Numerical results illustrate the ability of the model to capture phase transition and metastable states.