AUTHOR=Che Shuai , Breitenmoser David , Infimovskiy Yuriy Yu , Manera Annalisa , Petrov Victor 

TITLE=CFD Simulation of Two-Phase Flows in Helical Coils

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Energy Research

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2020.00065

DOI=10.3389/fenrg.2020.00065

ISSN=2296-598X

ABSTRACT=The behavior of two-phase flow and corresponding flow regimes in helical tubes significantly differ when compared to two-phase flows in straight tubes due to centrifugal and torsion effects. In order to gain physical insight and gather data for validating computational models, a large number of experiments were performed on a helical coil experimental setup operated with a mixture of water and air. The experimental data were used to assess the predictive capabilities of current two-phase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models based on the Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach. In the present paper, a comparison of the CFD simulation results with the high-resolution experimental data is discussed, with special emphasis on two-phase pressure drops and void fraction distributions. It is shown that the CFD VOF model is able to correctly capture the occurrence of five flow regimes observed in the experiments, namely bubbly flow, plug flow, slug flow, slug-annular flow, and annular flow. However, a good quantitative agreement for pressure drops and void fraction distributions is found in slug flow and slug-annular flow regimes only.