Experimental and numerical study of Taylor flow in a square minichannel

Abstract

A numerical and experimental study of Taylor bubbles in a square minichannel with a side of 1 mm has been carried out. A three-dimensional numerical simulation was performed using the volume of fluid method in the open source package OpenFOAM. An experimental study was performed using a high-speed shadow method and automatic processing. The characteristic flow regimes are investigated, with the main attention being paid to the Taylor regime. In the course of the work, the calculated and experimental data were compared, and their good agreement was shown. The distribution of velocities in a liquid and gas, as well as the distribution of the liquid film thickness in a bubble, is studied. The thickness of the liquid film in the corner and the center of the channel is compared with the corresponding well-known correlations. A dependence that describes the thickness of a liquid film in a square channel is proposed. Investigations of the streamline both in the liquid near the bubble and in the bubble itself. It is shown that in the square channel in front of the bubble there are four stable vortexes in the direction of the channel corners. Inside the bubble there is a specific flow from the tail to the nose of the bubble. There is a swirling of the gas in the transverse direction in the bubble.