Numerical simulation of the interfacial growth of the stratified wa vytwo-phase flow in the horizontal rectangular channel

Ebihara, Kenichi   ; Watanabe, Tadashi

This paper describes the numerical simulation of the interfacial growth of the stratified wavy two-phase flow in the horizontal rectangular channel. The influence of the channel width upon the growth of the interfacial wave was evaluated by the several simulations for the different channel width. The numerical simulation model adopted in this paper is a one-component two-phase fluid model of the lattice Boltzmann method. The wave growth was observed and the dimensionless numbers that characterize the two-phase flow state were measured during the computations. The relation between the wave growth and the dimensionless numbers, which characterize the flow state, was compared with that in the flow pattern map proposed by Taitel and Dukler. It was verified in the case of the wide channel width that the simulated relation was almost in agreement with that in the flow pattern map. It was shown that the narrower the channel width became, the more mass flow rate of the rare phase the interfacial growth needed and the obtained relation deviated from that in the flow pattern map.