Experimental study on local interfacial parameters in upward air-water bubbly flow in a vertical 6 × 6 rod bundle

Abstract

This paper presents a complete database of the local two-phase flow parameters for upward adiabatic air-water two-phase flows in a vertical 6 × 6 rod bundle flow channel. A total of 16 flow conditions were selected and investigated at 16 measuring points in the octant triangular measuring region of a cross section at the position with height-to-diameter ratio of 149 (z/DH = 149) in the rod bundle experiment. The local void fraction, interfacial area concentration (IAC), bubble diameter and bubble velocity vector were measured by using the four-sensor optical probe measuring technique. In the measured cross-sectional distributions of local void fraction and IAC, both core-peaking and wall-peaking distribution shapes were observed and the distribution pattern trended to change from the core-peaking shape to the wall-peaking shape with the increase of superficial liquid velocity (〈jf〉) and the decrease of superficial gas velocity (〈jg〉). The radial distributions of local bubble diameter are nearly flat, which explains the similarity of the radial local void fraction and IAC distributions. The measured local bubble diameters increase with the increase of 〈jg〉 and the decrease of 〈jf〉. The bubbles move along the rod bundle flow channel with their velocity component in the main flow direction (vgz) showing a typical radial core-peaking profile and their velocity components in the cross section showing a significant movement from the central region to the channel box wall region especially under high superficial liquid velocities. The cross-sectional area-averaged results of the local parameters were obtained by a measuring-point-based graphical integration. The obtained area-averaged void fraction and IAC are compared with the predictions of the drift-flux model with its available 2 frequently-used distribution parameter and drift velocity correlations and the 2 recently-developed IAC correlations respectively. The applicability of the 2 drift-flux correlations and the 2 IAC correlations to the rod bundle flow channel is evaluated and analyzed.