An experimental investigation of the interface behavior of slug flow in horizontal pipe

Abstract

The simultaneous gas-liquid slug flow phenomena often occur in the industrial production such as the gas or oil transportation system. The research on the gas-liquid interface is essential to the safety design of industrial piping systems and the comprehension of flow mechanism. However, most of the researches on slug flow are only concentrated on the spatial domain parameters of slug bubble and seldom consider the frequency domain characteristics. In this paper, a series of experiments were performed to investigate the influence of gas and liquid phases on the interface shape of slug flow. The results show that the increase of gas or liquid superficial velocity has an opposite effect on the interface shape of slug flow. Moreover, the breakup of slug bubble tail was observed in the slug flow, and the breakup mechanism was developed based on the analysis of the frequency distribution of gas-liquid interface. Finally, the maximum spectral amplitude was presented as a new interface parameter to characterize the interface distribution of slug flow, and a correlation between the gas-liquid superficial velocity and the maximum spectral amplitude was established, which can further reveal the relationship between the interface behavior and the flow velocity.