An experimental investigation of underwater spread of oil spill in a shear flow

The time taken for spilt oil to appear firstly at the sea surface and its location are two key issues for emergency response. The underwater spread of oil spill in a shear flow was studied experimentally in a re-circulating water channel. The high speed imaging technology was employed to record the whole transport process of oil spilt from a leak of a submarine pipe to the surface. Based on the experimental results, three underwater transport types are identified, which are single droplet pattern (model A), linear chain pattern (model B) and oil plume pattern (model C), respectively. The pressure difference inside and outside of the leak determines the underwater transport pattern. For single droplet pattern, the transport of oil droplet has two successive stage, namely the accumulation stage and the buoyant droplet stage. When it comes to linear chain pattern, the first stage changes to be the initial jet stage. Besides the initial jet stage and the buoyant droplet stage, oil plume pattern has an intermediate transition stage, namely the plume development stage. During the whole floating process, the pressure difference dominates the initial stage, while droplet buoyancy is the driven force in the rest. The required time for oil droplets to reach the surface is increased with the decreasing of the initial momentum and the increasing of the shear flow velocity. In the buoyance dominated stage, the floating rate of oil droplets is basically unchanged and the horizontal migration rate is similar with the shear flow velocity. Both the break-up and coalescence of oil droplets have two forms, which are single droplet splitting and droplet-column separation for break-up form and turbulence merging and pursuit merging for coalescence form, respectively.