Towards the Understanding of Transformation of Annular to Droplet-Annular Gas-Liquid Flow

Annular flow and its deviations due to change of phase velocities in parallel and counter flows are very common in many adiabatic and non-adiabatic applications of two phase flow. The transformation from annular flow to its counterpart droplet-annular flow is often poorly understood as it needs to handle multi scale interfaces experimentally or numerically. In the present work, attempts have been made to capture both wavy annular interface and dynamics of tiny droplets throughout its life cycle using grid based volume of fluid framework. 3-D simulation domain with length (L)/diameter (D) ratio as 6 is considered under the effect of gravitational acceleration and phase inertial field. Wavy interface is observed numerically between the phases using phase fraction contours along with the occurrence of three very interesting phenomena, which include rolling, undercutting and orificing. At low liquid and gas velocities orificing has been observed which restricts the path of gaseous phase. Departure from the orificing phenomenon has been seen at higher gas phase velocities which transforms to other phenomenon called rolling. Rolling is the folding of liquid film by the high velocity gaseous phase towards the radially outward direction. Further, increase in liquid phase velocities above gaseous phase velocities results in undercutting of liquid film by the gas phase. Moreover the liquid droplets can be seen in the entire phenomenon through the gas phase in the core of the tube. We presented a regime map of gas liquid velocities to segregate clear understanding of annular to droplet-annular flow due to orificing, rolling and undercutting. The present study will enrich the knowledge of multiphase flow transportation in process plants, chemical reactors, nuclear reactors and refineries where gas-liquid annular flow is most widely used flow pattern.