Pressure drop prediction in annular two-phase flow in macroscale tubes and channels

Andrea Cioncolini*, John R. Thome

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

A new prediction method for the frictional pressure drop in annular two-phase flow is presented. This new prediction method focuses on the aerodynamic interaction between the liquid film and the gas core in annular flows, and explicitly takes into account the asymmetric liquid film distribution in the tube cross section induced by the action of gravity in horizontal tubes operated at low mass fluxes. The underlying experimental database contains 6291 data points from the literature with 13 fluid combinations (both single-component saturated fluids such as water, carbon dioxide and refrigerants R12, R22, R134a, R245fa, R410a, R1234ze, and two-component fluids such as water-argon, water-nitrogen, alcohol-argon, water plus alcohol-argon and water-air), vertical and horizontal tubes and annuli with diameters from 3 mm to 25 mm, and both adiabatic and evaporating flow conditions. The new prediction method is very simple to implement and use, is physically based and outperforms existing pressure drop correlations (mean absolute error of 12.9%, and 7 points out of 10 captured to within ±15%).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)321-330
Number of pages10
JournalInternational Journal of Multiphase Flow
Volume89
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Aerodynamic interaction
  • Annular two-phase flow
  • Evaporation
  • Pressure drop
  • Pressure gradient
  • Shear-driven liquid film

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