Numerical study of three-dimensional droplet impact on a flowing liquid film in annular two-phase flow

Annular flow with liquid entrainment occurs in a wide variety of two-phase flow system. A novel control volume finite element method with adaptive unstructured meshes is employed here to study three-dimensional droplet deposition process in annular two-phase flow. The numerical framework consists of a ‘volume of fluid’ type method for the interface capturing and a force-balanced continuum surface force model for the surface tension on adaptive unstructured meshes. The numerical framework is validated against experimental measurements of a droplet impact problem and is then used to study the droplet deposition onto a flowing liquid film at atmospheric and high pressure conditions. Detailed complex interfacial structures during droplet impact are captured during the simulation, which agree with the experimental observations, demonstrating the capability of the present method. It is found that the effect of the ambient pressure on the fluid properties and interfacial tension plays an important role in the droplet deposition process and the associated interfacial phenomena.

[1]  D. Pavlidis,et al.  Improving the convergence behaviour of a fixed‐point‐iteration solver for multiphase flow in porous media , 2017 .

[2]  Kensuke Yokoi,et al.  A Numerical Method for Free-Surface Flows and Its Application to Droplet Impact on a Thin Liquid Layer , 2008, J. Sci. Comput..

[3]  A. Yarin.  Drop Impact Dynamics: Splashing, Spreading, Receding, Bouncing ... , 2006 .

[4]  S. Zaleski,et al.  DIRECT NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FREE-SURFACE AND INTERFACIAL FLOW , 1999 .

[5]  David M. Ingram,et al.  Free-surface flows under impacting droplets , 2008, J. Comput. Phys..

[6]  L. Leng.  Splash formation by spherical drops , 2001, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[7]  Dimitrios Pavlidis,et al.  Two- and three-phase horizontal slug flow simulations using an interface-capturing compositional approach , 2014 .

[8]  J. Percival,et al.  Adaptive unstructured mesh modelling of multiphase flows , 2014 .

[9]  Dimitrios Pavlidis,et al.  Compressive advection and multi‐component methods for interface‐capturing , 2016 .

[10]  Dimitrios Pavlidis,et al.  Control volume finite element modelling of segregation of sand and granular flows in fluidized beds , 2014 .

[11]  Barry J. Azzopardi,et al.  Drops in annular two-phase flow , 1997 .

[12]  B. P. Leonard,et al.  The ULTIMATE conservative difference scheme applied to unsteady one-dimensional advection , 1991 .

[13]  Markus Bussmann,et al.  Modeling the splash of a droplet impacting a solid surface , 2000 .

[14]  Geoffrey F. Hewitt,et al.  STUDIES OF BURNOUT IN BOILING HEAT TRANSFER. , 1967 .

[15]  Lou Jing,et al.  Lattice Boltzmann simulation of a drop impact on a moving wall with a liquid film , 2014, Comput. Math. Appl..

[16]  D. Hann,et al.  Study of the impacts of droplets deposited from the gas core onto a gas-sheared liquid film , 2017 .

[17]  J. Lou,et al.  A numerical study on splash of oblique drop impact on wet walls , 2015 .

[18]  T. Kunugi,et al.  Detailed observations of wavy interface behaviors of annular two-phase flow on rod bundle geometry , 2014 .

[19]  Barry J. Azzopardi,et al.  Study of gas-sheared liquid film in horizontal rectangular duct using high-speed LIF technique: Three-dimensional wavy structure and its relation to liquid entrainment , 2014 .

[20]  C.R.E. de Oliveira,et al.  Tetrahedral mesh optimisation and adaptivity for steady-state and transient finite element calculations , 2001 .

[21]  J. Percival,et al.  A balanced-force control volume finite element method for interfacial flows with surface tension using adaptive anisotropic unstructured meshes , 2016 .

[22]  Zhihua Xie,et al.  Improving the robustness of the control volume finite element method with application to multiphase porous media flow , 2017 .

[23]  James R. Percival,et al.  A force‐balanced control volume finite element method for multi‐phase porous media flow modelling , 2017 .