An assessment of friction factor and viscosity correlations for model prediction of refrigerant flow in capillary tubes

Abstract

In this paper, a homogeneous model including the metastable liquid and metastable two-phase region is presented to assess the effects of various friction factor equations and two-phase viscosity correlations on simulating the behaviour of capillary tubes. Both straight and coiled capillary tubes are considered and R-22 is used for comparison. The predicted pressure distribution, tube lengths or mass flow rates are compared with experimental data reported in literature. It is confirmed that the predicting accuracy with homogeneous model can be improved by employing the suitable correlations of friction factor and two-phase viscosity. For straight capillaries, the Churchill and Colebrook friction factor correlations give almost the same simulating results. However, the numerical results show that the optimum combination of correlations of friction factor and two-phase viscosity may be different when compared with different experimental data. For coiled capillaries, the Mori and Nakayama friction factor correlation agrees well with Ito's formula for single liquid-phase flow. Together with Giri's friction factor equation for two-phase flow, Cicchitti viscosity model best predicts the measured mass flow rate with an average error of 4.88%. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.