Dynamic Droplet Model for Two-Component Flows
There are many two-fluid mixtures of practical interest. For example, mixtures of air and water or oil and water occur frequently in environmental and industrial processes. FLOW-3D offers the capability of modeling mixtures of two fluids and the relative motion of the two components arising from buoyancy and viscous forces.
There are two types of two-component flows. One is a mixture of two fluids having different densities, but no sharp two-fluid interface. The other type is a single fluid which may have a free surface, but with a variable density arising from the mixture of two incompressible components.
The dispersed component is assumed to consist of spherical droplets or bubbles. This model requires the user to specify the average size of the dispersed material elements so that forces driving any relative motion can be computed.
There is also a model for dynamically computing dispersed fluid droplet sizes. The model is based on mechanisms for the breakup and coalescence of dispersed material controlled by the critical Weber and Capillary numbers.
A good application of the Dynamic Droplet model is air entrapment in water flowing down a spillway or sloped chute. The published thesis of K. Krammer (Development of Aerated Chute Flow, ETH, Zürich, 2004) offers an excellent example of this type of flow that includes measured data on the distribution of bubble sizes within the flow. The chute, shown in Fig. 1, was 14m long, 0.5m wide and tilted with respect to the horizontal by 5.71°. An inlet flow depth of 0.05m was used with a premixed air concentration of 17.76% and containing 10% turbulence. This flow has an inlet flow rate of 0.1755 m3/s, which corresponds to the Froude number of 10.03.
Simulations were done with the FLOW-3D advanced air entrainment model that includes buoyancy and bulking of the water-air mixture. In addition to the entrained air introduced with the inlet flow, there is also air entrained at the surface of the flow that adds volume (bulking) to the mixture, as illustrated in Fig. 2, which shows the flow in the symmetry plane along the first meter of the chute. Beyond the first meter from the inlet the flow is nearly uniform in depth and in the distribution of air and bubble sizes.
In the experiment the nominal free surface of the flow was assumed to be at the location where the concentration of the air is 90% (or 10% water). In the simulation this condition is imposed by using the air escape mechanism and limiting the minimum water volume fraction to be 0.1.
The computed volume fraction of air in the cross section of the chute, at the end of the chute where the flow is nearly steady and uniform is shown in Fig. 3. A small disturbance exists at the side walls is associated with observed roll waves emanating from frictional forces at the sides of the chute.
The computed depth of flow is 0.061m, which is close to the reported depth of 0.062m. The reported average air content at the end of the chute was about 16.7%, whereas the simulation has a value of about 20%.
A comparison of simulation results with experimental data for bubble diameters versus depth, at the midpoint of the chute is shown in Fig. 4. The agreement is very good overall. Although the simulated sizes are somewhat smaller than the data near the top of the flow, the experimenters reported that sizes near the free surface were difficult to accurately measure. In any case, it is clear that the dynamic droplet model adds more realism to FLOW-3D simulations of two-component flows.
