Investigation of single bubble behavior under rolling motions using multiphase MPS method on GPU

Abstract

Study of single bubble behavior under rolling motions can prove useful for fundamental understanding of flow field inside the modern small modular nuclear reactors. The objective of the present study is to simulate the influence of rolling conditions on single rising bubble in a liquid using multiphase Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method. Rolling force term was added to 2D Navier-Stokes equations and a computer program was written using C language employing OpenACC to port the code to GPU. Computational results obtained were found to be in good agreement with the results available in literature. The impact of rolling parameters on trajectory and velocity of the rising bubble has been studied. It has been found that bubble rise velocity increases with rolling amplitude due to modification of flow field around the bubble. It has also been concluded that the oscillations of free surface, caused by rolling, influence the bubble trajectory. Furthermore, it has been discovered that smaller vessel width reduces the impact of rolling motions on the rising bubble. The effect of liquid viscosity on bubble rising under rolling was also investigated and it was found that effects of rolling became more pronounced with the increase of liquid viscosity.