CFD Analysis and Comparison with Experimental Results of Underwater Vertical Upward Air and Oil Jets

Objective of the present study is to perform a validation of experimental results for underwater air jet and oil jet breakup length using ANSYS Fluent. Prior to that, SKE was found to be the most suitable among RANS turbulence models. Grids were designed with the exact dimensions of the experimental facilities and meshed with quad elements of aspect ratio equal to 1, enabling quick solution convergence. Volume of Fluid multiphase model along with Geo-reconstruct enabled multiphase interphase tracking. For air flow rate of 0.0122 m3/s largest difference between computational predictions and experimental data was up to 4.98% for 1.0 m depth. Fluctuation of the oil jet breakup location for 2 mm diameter orifice ranged between 5 and 20%. Several oil jet velocities tested yielding a maximum deviation of 8.21% for breakup length compared to the experimental results. Sinuous, polydispersion and atomization breakup regimes were observed during CFD analysis