Initiation of slugs in horizontal gas‐liquid flows

Experiments were conducted with air‐water flow in a horizontal 0.095‐m pipeline at atmospheric pressure to examine the mechanism by which slugs form in a stratified flow. A specially designed entrance box was used to avoid disturbances. In these experiments, at superficial gas velocities less than 3 m/s, the slugs are found to evolve from waves, with a length of about 0.085 m, that are generated by a Jeffreys mechanism. These waves grow in height and eventually double in wavelength by a nonlinear resonance mechanism. Depending on the height of the liquid, the growth can lead to a breaking wave or to a wave that fills the whole pipe cross section. At superficial gas velocities equal to or greater than 4 m/s capillary‐gravity waves with a wide range of lengths are generated by a linear Kelvin‐Helmholtz mechanism. These rapidly evolve into long waves outside the range of linear instability. If the liquid height is large enough, these waves can form slugs through a nonlinear Kelvin‐Helmholtz instability that is aided by wave coalescence.