Two-phase Flow Patterns in a Square Mini-channel

This paper presents a new set of experimental data of air-water flow patterns in a channel with a cross-section of 1×1 mm2. The ranges of the gas and liquid superficial velocities are 0.1-10 m/s and 0.2~7 m/s, respectively. Bubble, bubble-slug, slug, and frothy flows are observed. The present data are compared with other data in mini-channels reported in literature, and also compared with those in normal channel at microgravity, in which the Bond number has the same order of magnitude. The slug-frothy boundary is in consistent with each other, but for the bubble-slug transition, a much smaller value for the transition quality in the drift-flux model is obtained in the present study than those predicted by the empirical relations for the case of microgravity. It's shown that the mini-scale modeling may not be an effective way to anticipate the bubble-slug transition of two-phase flow at microgravity.

Two-phase flow patterns in a square mini-channel

This paper presents a new set of experimental data of air-water flow patterns in a channel with a cross-section of 1×1 mm². The ranges of the gas and liquid superficial velocities are 0.1–10 m/s and 0.2–7 m/s, respectively. Bubble, bubble-slug, slug, and frothy flows are observed. The present data are compared with other data in mini-channels reported in literature, and also compared with those in normal channel at microgravity, in which the Bond number has the same order of magnitude. The slug-frothy boundary is in consistent with each other, but for the bubble-slug transition, a much smaller value for the transition quality in the drift-flux model is obtained in the present study than those predicted by the empirical relations for the case of microgravity. It’s shown that the mini-scale modeling may not be an effective way to anticipate the bubble-slug transition of two-phase flow at microgravity.