Bubbles injection effect on Taylor–Couette flow controlled by deformations of inner cylinder cross-section

Abstract

A numerical simulation is carried out to make investigation of bubbles interactions when injected in Taylor–Couette system. This process can affect the flow patterns, especially when it is combined with inner cylinder cross-section oscillations. The included phase is modeled by the Lagrangian approach. The flow regime range is considered until the onset of the wavy Taylor vortex flow (low regime). We attempt to characterize bubbles dispersion effects on the drag force near the inner-cylinder while it is executing radial sinusoidal deformations. It is assumed that the obtained configurations of air-bubbles accumulations are compared for validation with experimental and numerical studies from the literature. The bubbles have uniform spherical shape with a diameter Db = 0.06d, where d is the system gap width. The inner cylinder oscillation is imposed using a sinusoidal law with a fixed deforming frequency and different amplitude ratios of the initial radius R1. Overall, without reaching a fully developed regime, the obtained results for a low Taylor number showed that the drag reduction ratio could be decreased when the inner cylinder is deformed.