The Effect of Bubble-Induced Turbulence on the Interfacial Area Transport in Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Flow

Abstract

In the present work, two common modelling concepts taking into account the influence of bubbles on the turbulence of the liquid phase with available models in open literature were implemented in the EAGLE (Elaborated Analysis of Gas-Liquid flow Evolution) code and assessed against experimental data of Hibiki et al. (2001). The EAGLE code has been developed at KAERI based on the two-fluid model for a multi-dimensional analysis of two-phase flow with the implementation of non-drag force, standard k-ε turbulence model, and the interfacial area transport equation. In order to investigate the bubble size effect on two-phase flow evolution and to provide a data set for developing the physical models to describe the bubble-induced turbulence effect and also for validating the EAGLE code, a series of local parameter measurements as well as visualization tests were conducted in air-water vertical-upward flow condition in which the initial bubble size is controlled by a specially designed bubble generator. The numerical results and experimental data were compared, analysed and discussed in this paper.