Numerical Study of Stratified Gas-Liquid Flow

Abstract

In this work the effects of empirical correlations of friction factors (wall and interfacial) on the numerical stability and parameters predictions in stratified gas-liquid pipelines flow, was studied using the two-fluid model, where unequal phase pressure effects were considered. To study the effects of such empirical correlations without taking into account the instabilities due to ill-posed initial-value problems or multiple solutions, the two-fluid model was solved using input data, which satisfies a linear stability criterion where multiple solutions do not occur. In general, we found that the empirical correlations are not important for numerical stability but do, however, affect significantly the parameters predictions.

Keywords:

• finite difference method
• friction factors
• linear stability
• stratified flow
• two-fluid model