Steady bubble rise in Herschel–Bulkley fluids and comparison of predictions via the Augmented Lagrangian Method with those via the Papanastasiou model

Abstract

The steady, buoyancy-driven rise of a bubble in a Herschel–Bulkley fluid is examined assuming axial symmetry. The variation of the rate-of-strain tensor around a rising bubble necessitates the coexistence of fluid and solid regions in this fluid. In general, a viscoplastic fluid will not be deforming beyond a finite region around the bubble and, under certain conditions, it will not be deforming either just behind it or around its equatorial plane. The accurate determination of these regions is achieved by introducing a Lagrange multiplier and a quadratic term in the corresponding variational inequality, resulting in the so-called Augmented Lagrangian Method (ALM). Additionally here, the augmentation parameters are determined following a non-linear conjugate gradient procedure. The new predictions are compared against those obtained by the much simpler Papanastasiou model, which uses a continuous constitutive equation throughout the material, irrespective of its state, but does not determine the boundary between solid and liquid along with the flow field. The flow equations are solved numerically using the mixed finite-element/Galerkin method on a mesh generated by solving a set of quasi-elliptic differential equations. The accuracy of solutions is ascertained by mesh refinement and comparison with our earlier and new predictions for a bubble rising in a Newtonian and a Bingham fluid. We determine the bubble shape and velocity and the shape of the yield surfaces for a wide range of material properties, expressed in terms of the Bingham, Bn, Bond, and Archimedes numbers. As Bn increases, the bubble decelerates, the yield surfaces at its equatorial plane and away from it approach each other and eventually merge immobilizing the bubble. For small and moderate Bingham numbers, the predictions using the Papanastasiou model satisfactorily approximate those of the discontinuous Herschel–Bulkley model for sufficiently large values of the normalization exponent (⩾104). On the contrary, as Bn increases and the rate-of-strain approaches zero almost throughout the fluid-like region, much larger values of the exponent are required to accurately compute the yield surfaces. Bubble entrapment does not depend on the power law index, i.e. a bubble in a Herschel–Bulkley fluid is entrapped under the same conditions as in a Bingham fluid.