Characteristics of pressure drop for single-phase and two-phase flow across sudden contraction in microtubes

Abstract

Single-phase and gas-liquid two-phase pressure drops caused by a sudden contraction in microtubes were experimentally investigated at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, using nitrogen and water. The experimental results on pressure drop with a novel measurement method, the tiny gaps on the tubes, were used to characterize the sudden contraction pressure drop for tube diameters from 850 to 330 μm. The ranges of the gas and liquid superficial velocity were 2.55–322.08 and 0.98–9.78 m/s in the smaller tube respectively. In single-phase flow experiments, the contraction loss coefficients were larger than the experimental results from conventional tubes in the laminar flow. While in the turbulent flow, the contraction loss coefficients were slightly smaller than those from conventional tubes and predicted well by Kc=0.5×(1−σ2)0.75. In two-phase flow experiments, the slip flow model with a velocity slip ratio S=(ρL/ρG)1/3 showed a good prediction that reveals the occurrence of velocity slip. An empirical correlation for two-phase flow pressure drops caused by the sudden contraction was developed based on the proposed contraction loss coefficients correlation for single-phase flow and Martinelli factor.