Effects of rolling motion on transient flow behaviors of gas-liquid two-phase flow in horizontal pipes

Abstract

The investigation of transient flow behaviors of gas-liquid two-phase flow under ocean conditions is vital to the application of gas-liquid transport in ocean engineering area. In this paper, the gas-liquid two-phase flow numerical model of rolling horizontal pipe is established based on CFD code combined with user-defined functions (UDF). The three-dimensional rolling flow fields are simulated using the volume of fluid (VOF) model, RNG k−ε turbulence model and additional inertia force method. First, the simulation results are compared with the experimental data, which revealed a reasonable agreement. Then, the variation in transient flow behaviors by horizontal pipe (L = 2.0 m, D = 0.035 m) with varying rolling conditions (θm = 2°-6°, T = 0.5–4.0 s) and flow velocities (jG = 0.1–10.0 m/s, jL = 0.1–0.5 m/s) are investigated. The results showed that the rolling motion caused agglomeration of dispersed bubbles and gas slugs into a continuous gas column, increased the cross-sectional void fraction significantly. The variation of additional inertial force and pressure drop increased with the increase of rolling angle and the decrease of the rolling period. Compared with the rolling angle, the transient flow behaviors are more sensitive to the rolling period. In addition, as the initial gas volume fraction increased, the effects of rolling motion on the transient flow behaviors decreased gradually. These qualitative conclusions may serve as a reference for gas-liquid transport simulations under rolling conditions.