Abstract
Two-phase flow of gas and liquid or two immiscible liquids in submillimeter size channels have applications in a range of industries such as chemical processing, electronics cooling, automotive, aerospace, and healthcare. A comprehensive understanding of mass, momentum, and heat transfer during two-phase flow in these channels is important for the efficient design of the microstructured devices. Depending on the channel geometry, fluid properties, and flow rates, different flow regimes such as dispersed bubble/droplet flow, slug flow, and annular/parallel flow occur in the channel. Interface capturing methods are commonly used to model two-phase flow in microchannels. These methods employ a single fluid formalism, and only one set of mass, momentum, and energy equations are solved. The presence of a fluid phase at a position is identified using a marker or color function, and its evolution is modeled using an advection equation. The boundary conditions at the fluid interface such as pressure jump caused by surface tension are incorporated as the source terms in the governing equations using Gauss divergence theorem. This chapter discusses the main features of the three interface capturing methods, namely, volume of fluid (VOF), level set, and phase field methods to model two-phase flow, heat, and mass transfer in microchannels. The challenges in the use of these methods in modeling slug and annular flow regimes in microchannels are discussed and the ways to address them are suggested.
Published Version
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