Air-water two-phase flow is present in natural and industrial processes of different nature as nuclear
reactors. An accurate local prediction of the boiling flow could support safety and operation
analyses of nuclear reactors. A new Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is investigated in this contribution.
A new solver has been developed and implemented in the framework of the open source
package OpenFOAM
R
and based on the PIMPLE algorithm coupled with the Lagrangian equation
of motion has been implemented for computing incompressible bubbly flows. Each bubble is
divided in equivolumetric volumes and tracked into the Eulerian mesh for an appropriate assignment
of the effect of the bubble in the cell without resolving the interface. The coupling between
phases is done considering in the momentum equation the interfacial forces and bubble induced
contribution along the bubble path during an Eulerian time step. The bouncing of the bubbles between
themselves and the wall is modeled with a dynamic soft sphere model. The computational
results obtained for different flow conditions are validated with the recently released experimental
data on upward pipe flow. The test section used is a 52 mm pipe of 5500 mm of length maintained
under adiabatic conditions with air and water circulating fluids working with inlet velocity
ranges of 0-2 m/s and 0-0.3 m/s for the continuous and dispersed phase respectively. Averaged
results of radial distribution for void fraction, chord length, turbulence kinetic energy, dispersed
and continuous velocity profiles show a good agreement among different flow conditions.Peña Monferrer, C.; Muñoz-Cobo González, JL.; Monrós Andreu, G.; Martinez Cuenca, R.; Chiva Vicent, S. (2014). An Eulerian-Lagrangian open source solver for bubbly flow in vertical pipes. Sociedad Nuclear Española. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/71943