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Viscous co‐current downward Taylor flow in a square mini‐channel
Author(s) -
Keskin Özge,
Wörner Martin,
Soyhan Hakan S.,
Bauer Tobias,
Deutschmann Olaf,
Lange Rüdiger
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.12113
Subject(s) - bubble , mechanics , capillary action , volume of fluid method , volume (thermodynamics) , square (algebra) , flow (mathematics) , capillary number , hydraulic diameter , current (fluid) , viscous liquid , materials science , computational fluid dynamics , geometry , thermodynamics , physics , mathematics , reynolds number , turbulence
This article presents a computational study of the co‐current downward Taylor flow of gas bubbles in a viscous liquid within a square channel of 1 mm hydraulic diameter. The three‐dimensional numerical simulations are performed with an in‐house computer code, which is based on the volume‐of‐fluid method with interface reconstruction. The computed (always axi‐symmetric) bubble shapes are validated by experimental flow visualizations for varying capillary number. The evaluation of the numerical results for a series of simulations reveals the dependence of the bubble diameter and the interfacial area per unit volume on the capillary number. Correlations between bubble velocity and total superficial velocity are also provided. The present results are useful to estimate the values of the bubble diameter, the liquid film thickness and the interfacial area per unit volume from given values of the gas and liquid superficial velocities. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010