Investigation on Effect of Gravity Level on Bubble Distribution and Liquid Turbulence Modification for Horizontal Channel Bubbly Flow

Abstract

Bubbly flows in the horizontal channel or pipe are often seen in industrial engineering fields, so it is very necessary to fully understand hydrodynamics of horizontal bubbly flows so as to improve industrial efficiency and to design an efficient bubbly system. In this paper, in order to fully understand mechanisms of phase distribution and liquid–phase turbulence modulation in the horizontal channel bubbly flow, the influence of gravity level on both of them were investigated in detail with the developed Euler–Lagrange two–way coupling method. For the present investigation, the buoyance on bubbles in both sides of the channel always points to the corresponding wall in order to study the liquid–phase turbulence modulation by bubbles under the symmetric physical condition. The present investigation shows that the gravity level has the important influence on the wall–normal distribution of bubbles and the liquid–phase turbulence modulation; the higher the gravity level is, the more bubbles can overcome the wall–normal resistance to accumulate near the wall, and the more obvious the liquid–phase turbulence modulation is. It is also discovered that interphase forces on the bubbles are various along the wall–normal direction, which leads to the fact that the bubble located in different wall–normal places has a different wall–normal velocity.