Experimental investigation of droplet entrainment and deposition in horizontal stratified wavy flow

Abstract

An experimental study of the local droplet parameters for an atmospheric horizontal stratified wavy flow was conducted in a horizontal circular pipe with an inner diameter of 40 mm and a length of 5.5 m. The local distributions of the droplet fraction, droplet velocity, droplet diameter, and droplet mass flux in the cross section of the pipe were measured using single optical fiber probes at four locations with length-to-diameter ratios of 17.5, 55.0, 80.0, and 105.0 from the inlet of the test section. The average droplet mass flow rate along the axial direction of the flow channel was also obtained from the droplet parameters. The combination of the droplet entrainment and deposition rate models of Schimpf et al. was evaluated for droplet mass flow rates obtained from five different experiments including the present experiment in the horizontal stratified flow. However, its prediction accuracy was not good for the present and REGARD data. Finally, new droplet entrainment and deposition rate models for the horizontal stratified flow were proposed based on those five experiments. The applicable ranges of the proposed models are 65,500–571,400 and 170–11,000 for the gas (Reg) and liquid (Rel) Reynolds numbers, respectively.