A two-phase, two-component model for vertical upward gas–liquid annular flow

In this paper, a new two-fluid two-component computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to simulate vertical upward two-phase annular flow. The two-phase VOF scheme is utilized to model the roll wave flow, and the gas core is described by a two-component phase consisting of liquid droplets and gas phase. The entrainment and deposition processes are taken into account by source terms of the governing equations. Unlike the previous models, the newly developed model includes the effect of liquid roll waves directly determined from the CFD code, which is able to provide more detailed and, the most important, more self-standing information for both the gas core flow and the film flow as well as their interactions. Predicted results are compared with experimental data, and a good agreement is achieved.

► Two-phase gas-liquid annular flow is numerically studied using a newly established two-phase, two-component model. ► This is a self-constitutive model that only introduces entrainment and deposition correlations in the open literature. ► Roll wave parameters of annular flow can be well captured by the present model.